


To Halve and to Hold

by Jezunya



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Background Nwalin, Canon-Typical Violence, Cultural Differences, Dwarven Ones | Soulmates, Flashbacks, Happy Ending, M/M, POV Alternating, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Present Tense, Shipper Trash Grandpa at it again, Soulbond Super Powers, background Kiliel, the Quest for Erebor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-05 01:42:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 49,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14033409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jezunya/pseuds/Jezunya
Summary: “Dwarves have an ancient tale,” Gandalf begins, settling himself more comfortably on the bench against the wall, “from the time when the Valar formed the world. Aulë, whom they call Mahal, their Maker, cut the dwarves from the living stone of the world, and some of those pieces, it is said, were hewn in two.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I finally got tired of having this just sitting in my WIP folder, so thought I'd share.
> 
> The title was suggested semi-jokingly on Tumblr a while back, and it just kinda stuck, lol.
> 
> More to follow at some point...

Amidst all the chaos and carousing and Bilbo’s continued distressed flapping at the dwarves who’ve invaded his home, it is a wonder any of them hear the knocking at the door – but hear it they do, and his unexpected guests all fall very suddenly silent.

“ _He_ ,” Gandalf says into the quiet, with what Bilbo thinks must certainly be unwarranted gravity, “is here.”

The dwarf on the other side of the door when Bilbo answers it is— Well, he’s— He’s _very_ handsome, if Bilbo is being honest with himself, tall and broad and muscular, with a strong, sharp nose and piercing blue eyes, and, well, Bilbo’s never been an especial fan of facial hair, as in his experience it’s only really found on Big Folk, but this dwarf wears it quite well, and the streaks of silver at his brow and temples are really rather regal looking, and—

And they’ve both been standing here staring at each other across the threshold for several long, silent seconds now, he realizes with a start as Gandalf comes up behind him.

“Bilbo Baggins,” the wizard says, dropping an enormous hand on his shoulder, “may I introduce Thorin Oakenshield, the leader of our company.”

The dwarf – Thorin – seems to shake himself and finally steps through the doorway, blinking wide eyes down at Bilbo as he strides past. It occurs to Bilbo a moment too late, at the strange thrill that goes through him with the close proximity, that he probably ought to have stepped back to allow the stranger through, but even inside the dwarf doesn’t go far, stands only a few paces away, still staring down at Bilbo like a starving man might look at the Midsummer Day’s party spread. Bilbo tears his eyes away at last to shut the door, and hears the conversation pick up behind his back.

“This is the hobbit?” the new dwarf asks, and is it Bilbo’s imagination or is there a slight strangled quality to his deep voice? “Your… _burglar?_ ”

“Yes,” Gandalf answers cheerfully, either unaware of or unconcerned by the odd moment that had passed between them at the door.

“What?!” Bilbo squawks, spinning around to face the room again, but Gandalf pays him no heed and goes right on talking.

“As you might know, hobbits are quite light on their feet,” the wizard says, “and Bilbo here especially—”

“No.”

Gandalf does pause then, blinking in surprise at the abrupt dismissal from their newest arrival. “I… assure you, Master Oakenshield,” he continues, more slowly and slightly less jovial now, “he is quite up to the task.”

“No,” Thorin says again, more vehemently than before, shaking his head as he rips the cloak from his shoulders. One of the other dwarves – the short, white-haired one, Balin? – comes forward to take it from his hands, and he rounds on Gandalf and Bilbo again. “I would not care if he were the master of all burglars in the westerlands! I will not take this halfling on our quest, Tharkûn.”

“Now, really, Thorin, be reasonable,” Gandalf frowns, as Bilbo opens his mouth to say he has no interest in going off on some hare-brained quest in any case,  but he is drowned out by the chorus of cries that goes up from the dwarves spilling out of the dining room.

“Thorin—!”

“Uncle—!”

“But don’t we _need_ a burglar?”

“We must have a fourteenth member!”

“It’s bad luck!”

“Did he say he was a master burglar?”

“I will not endanger my One!” Thorin Oakenshield roars above them all, cutting easily through the pandemonium, and there is an audible, collective intake of breath in his wake as the group quiets once more.

“Thorin,” the old one – Balin, Bilbo’s almost certain – murmurs into the silence, sounding full of awe. “Do you mean to say…?”

The dark-haired dwarf closes his eyes, draws in a breath through his teeth, and then gives a single, sharp nod.

There are, all of a sudden, thirteen pairs of eyes all staring at Bilbo with varying levels of wonderment and consideration, one wizard and twelve dwarves, and after a moment the thirteenth dwarf finally raises burning blue eyes to pin him in place as well.

“W-what?” Bilbo squeaks, blinking madly back at Thorin Oakenshield and only just resisting the urge to turn and flee from his own home.

Those blue eyes keep him frozen in place, though, and he watches as the dwarf draws in a long breath, squaring his shoulders. “Bilbo Baggins,” he rumbles, as though trying out the shape of the name in his mouth, his deep voice sending shudders running up Bilbo’s spine despite himself. “I am Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór, most recently of the Blue Mountains, and heir to the throne of Erebor, which we,” he glances once over his shoulder at the dwarves behind him, who variously grin or wave at Bilbo, “intend to reclaim.”

Bilbo feels himself blanch at the word ‘throne.’ It’s not often they entertain royalty in Hobbiton! “Oh…” he murmurs, hearing a distant ringing in his ears, yet still thinking, somewhere in the back of his mind, that even royalty ought to wait for an invitation before coming over for supper.

“I regret that we have been forced to meet under such circumstances,” the dwarf continues, thick arms folding over his great barrel chest, “but once our quest is complete, I will send for you, or return in person so that we might court properly.”

“ _Court?!_ ” Bilbo chokes, and Thorin’s dark brows draw together into a scowl.

“Yes,” he snaps. Then, pausing for a moment, his frown only deepening, he adds, “Unless you are already wed to another?”

“No, I’m not—” Bilbo answers automatically, before catching himself. His ears are burning, his face is flushed, but he marshals his best returning glare, determined to stand his ground against this infuriating, intimidating, _tall_ dwarf, at least while he’s still in his own home! He draws himself up to his full – admittedly meager – height, hands firmly on his hips. “I am _not_ married, though I don’t see how that is any of _your_ business. I don’t know why you’re all _staring_ at me, and I’m afraid I must say I would really rather appreciate it if you _stopped_ , as I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re on about!”

Thorin squints down at him as if he thinks Bilbo must be exceedingly thick. “You are my One,” he says simply, slowly, enunciating each word with great care.

Bilbo blinks up at him with a blank frown and asks, “One what?”

A murmur of astonishment goes through the dwarves, and Thorin rears back slightly, looking more and more thunderous with each passing second.

“If I may,” Gandalf cuts in then, and there is the curl of a barely suppressed chuckle in his voice, as if Bilbo is missing out on some very fine joke. “There is much lost in translation, I’m afraid, and I think I may be able to help explain.” He pauses, waiting for some sort of response, but Thorin doesn’t so much give his assent as refuse to remove his daggered stare from Bilbo’s face.

“What’s this all about, Gandalf?” Bilbo asks, striving to temper his tone yet finding he is equally unwilling to forfeit the staring contest with the dwarf lord.

“Dwarves have an ancient tale,” Gandalf begins, settling himself more comfortably on the bench against the wall, “from the time when the Valar formed the world. Aulë, whom they call Mahal, their Maker, cut the dwarves from the living stone of the world, and some of those pieces, it is said, were hewn in two.”

“Meaning…?” Bilbo prompts, frowning. Thorin, if anything, looks only more offended.

The wizard’s smile is clearly evident in his voice. “One soul in two bodies.”

“What— You can't mean— _Soulmates?!_ ” Bilbo yelps, and finally looks away from Thorin in favor of the smirking old man. “And you think that— that I am—?!”

“I do not _think_ ,” Thorin interrupts him, drawing Bilbo’s gaze back to him. “I  _know_. A dwarf always recognizes their One.” Behind him, the other dwarves exchange nods and mutters of assent, as if that is all there is to it, a single word from their leader and it’s a done deal as far as they’re concerned!

It is Gandalf he appeals to again, after gawping like a fish for several seconds. “But I’m not a dwarf!” Bilbo cries, spinning to face the wizard in desperation.

“No,” Gandalf agrees slowly, and there is a twinkle in his eye now that Bilbo distinctly does not like. “You may not be carved of stone as they are, but perhaps there is a bit of a hard pebble at your core, packed in soft earth.”

“Soft is right,” Thorin Oakenshield snorts, and Bilbo rounds on him, mouth open to give him _quite_ a piece of his mind, but the dwarf cuts him off. “Tell me, Master Hobbit,” he growls, “have you any experience in combat? Are you trained with either sword or axe?” he asks. “Or any other weapon, for that matter?”

“I— Well.” Bilbo huffs, folding his arms across his chest. “I’ve some skill at conkers, if you must know.”

“As I thought,” the dwarf says with a nod and a little twist to his mouth as he turns away, hands clasped behind his back. “You would not last a day in the wilds, and I cannot slow this venture in order to accommodate you.”

“Ah— _Accommodate me?!_ ” Bilbo squawks, and gestures wildly at the clustered dwarves watching them from his dining room. “No, I shouldn’t expect _dwarves_ to be terribly _accommodating_ , not if they’re the sort of folk to barge into a stranger’s home and raid their pantry without so much as a by-your-leave!”

Thorin stills at that, and then he turns a truly blistering glower on his company.

“We… We didn’t know he was your…” one of the young ones – Kíli? Víli? Something like that – starts, but then trails off into pathetic silence under the force of that glare.

“We were under the impression we would be welcome here,” the dwarf leader says tightly after a moment, and now swings his baleful gaze toward Gandalf. “Perhaps we were misled in that.”

The wizard appears only a little sheepish in the face of this accusation. “The hospitality of hobbits is known far and wide, as I’m sure you’d be glad to know, my dear Bilbo.”

“Hospitality for guests who are invited!” Bilbo snaps. “And announced! And who don’t tromp mud through my home or abuse my mother’s china!”

Gandalf opens his mouth to reply and the dwarves all begin to mutter guiltily amongst themselves, but Thorin’s voice cuts easily through the din. “Enough!” he bellows, and then looks back down at Bilbo. “We shall address the matter of recompense when I return—”

“ _No_ , no, we most certainly will not,” Bilbo interrupts him, and is distantly gratified at the brief look of surprise that crosses the regal dwarf’s face, “because, I can assure you, there will be no call whatsoever for _any_ of you to return here, quest or no!”

The dwarf lord stares down at him with a look that Bilbo finds quite unreadable, blue eyes fierce and intense, and he thinks he sees a muscle jump in his cheek beneath the dark covering of his beard. Bilbo holds his gaze, feeling rather wildly defiant with the sudden strange turn of events, and waits for his response – a response that doesn’t come, as Thorin turns abruptly on his heel to issue orders to his company.

“See to your gear, then get some rest,” he barks. “We leave at first light.” He directs a glare over his shoulder to Gandalf again and adds, “You have until then to find us another burglar, Tharkûn, if you can. Otherwise we will do without, luck or no.”

“You are making a mistake, Thorin,” the wizard warns him gravely, rising from his bench to loom over them all as the dwarves shuffle out of the dining room and down the hall.

Thorin doesn’t budge, large hands curling into fists at his sides as he glares up at the old man. “The only mistake would be allowing my One to come to harm.”

“I am not your—!” Bilbo begins heatedly, irritated in equal measure by the wizard’s insistence on Bilbo’s going on this ridiculous quest and by the dwarf’s even _more_ ridiculous insistence on Bilbo supposedly being his _soulmate!_ He would happily wash his hands of the both of them right this instant, but the words die in his throat as Thorin looks at him again – and, for just a moment, Bilbo thinks he sees something rather like pain flash in those clear blue depths, before the dwarf seems to steel himself.

“I hope you will forgive the intrusion, Master Hobbit,” Thorin says, not quite meeting Bilbo’s gaze any longer. “We will not disturb you again this night.” He offers a short, sharp bow, and then turns to follow his companions deeper into Bag End, towards the many bedrooms that now stand empty, without a passel of fauntlings and relations to fill them – not that Bilbo had extended them an invitation to stay the night!

Not that he would be so ungracious as to turn them out into the cold, he grumbles internally, watching until the dwarf’s broad back disappears around the corner of the smial’s winding tunnels.

He is left alone with Gandalf then, the wizard looking about ready to set fire to certain dwarven beards, a feeling Bilbo can rather sympathize with at the moment. Bilbo turns to him, hands fidgeting at his sides as he levels a frown up at the tall figure. “I told you before that there would be no interest in adventures around here.”

“Really?” Gandalf asks in reply, bushy brows rising up toward his grey mane. “Not even to follow the other half of your soul?”

“I am not half of anything!” Bilbo snaps. “Or any _one._ ”

“No,” Gandalf muses in seeming agreement, ducking into the dining room to see if there is any decent food left behind by the pack of ravenous dwarves; Bilbo rather doubts it, though he follows the wizard in anyhow. “Not even half the hobbit your mother was.”

“Now, see here, Gandalf!” Bilbo balks, but the other goes right on talking over him.

“Whom I know for a fact would have jumped at the chance to see more of the world beyond these safe little borders,” the wizard says tartly, passing over a half-finished bowl of stew and instead reaching for the last quarter of a meat pie on the table. “I had thought Belladonna Took’s son might like to get his nose out of his books and maps and perhaps see what all those distant lands actually looked like with his own eyes, but apparently I was mistaken.”

“Yes. Well.” Bilbo tugs at his braces, keeping his frown firmly in place, despite the heat he can feel climbing up around his ears. He’d grown up on stories of his mother’s travels, had fancied himself quite the little explorer when he was just a hobbitling – but he’d outgrown all that long ago. “Adventuring is all well and good for some wild tween from out in Buckland, but I would remind you, Gandalf, I am a Baggins of Bag End.”

“Mm. So it would seem,” Gandalf grunts, and elbows his way past Bilbo back out of the dining room, taking his meat pie and a tankard of ale along with him as he starts down the hall after the dwarves. “And at this rate, that is all you will ever be. Good night!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AO3 started putting random spaces around all of the italicized text when I was loading it in here; I think I fixed all of them, but please do let me know if you spot any I missed (or other typos, of course).
> 
> Kudos & comments of any length are greatly appreciated :)
> 
>  
> 
> [Here's a tumblr post for this fic, if anyone feels inclined to reblog it ♥](http://jezunya.tumblr.com/post/172094649769/new-fic-up-on-ao3-to-halve-and-to-hold-dwarves)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“And so you mean to leave your soulmate behind, where anything might happen to him without your knowledge?” the wizard asks at last._
> 
> _“He will be safe here,” Thorin responds. “These are peaceful lands. So long as he remains anonymous, there is no reason his life should be in any greater danger than it was before.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone for all the kudos and lovely comments on chapter one! I am, as usual, blown away by this delightful & supportive fandom :D
> 
> I absolutely cannot promise that future chapters will be out this quickly. I'm usually a very slow writer, so this was sort of a fluke, though obviously not an unwelcome one :)
> 
> Also, Thorin has two settings: schmoopy and brooding. Guess which one won out in this chapter.

Thorin’s cousins find him in the little sitting room towards the back of the labyrinthine hobbit hole, chewing on the stem of his pipe and staring down into the flames in the hearth. He expects their questions – has plenty enough questions himself, all coming back to the same answer no matter which way he looks at it.

“Well,” Balin starts, and Thorin straightens away from the mantelpiece, turning to face them as Dwalin, Óin, and Glóin trail into the room behind Balin and come to stand in a loose semi-circle facing Thorin. Balin clasps his hands in front of himself, a gleeful glint in his eye. “This is an unexpected turn of events.”

Dwalin snorts, folding his arms across his chest, and Thorin only just manages not to roll his eyes at his old tutor. 

“A _strange_ turn of events, I’d say,” Glóin huffs. “To find your One in such a place as this…”

“We choose neither the time nor the place the Maker has set for us,” Thorin murmurs, releasing a cloud of bluish smoke that he watches rise and billow against the ceiling before dissipating. “Nor the person…”

“That is certainly true,” Dwalin agrees, and his shield-brother is smiling when Thorin glances over at him, his thoughts no doubt turning towards his own wily, wholly unexpected soulmate.

“The portents placed special significance on the number of our party,” Óin says. “I thought it only a matter of lucky numbers, especially when we turned up thirteen to go, but now, with this revelation—”

Thorin is already shaking his head. “No. The halfling stays here.”

“But Thorin,” Glóin argues, “ _thirteen!_ ”

“Then the wizard makes fourteen!” he snaps. “Or else one of you can volunteer to stay back, and leave us at twelve.”

“Thorin…” Balin lays a tempering hand on his arm, and Thorin draws in a breath, dropping his gaze once more. “I do think, well… I think you’re doing the right thing. He will be safe here. It’s only…”

“Only what?” Thorin asks, looking over at the older dwarf.

Balin shakes his head, smiling grimly. “I suppose we’ll not be needing this anymore,” he murmurs, reaching inside his surcoat and pulling out a thick fold of papers that he hands off to Thorin. Thorin looks down at the rumpled, ink-stained pages, their best-laid plans already coming to naught, and slips them inside his own coat to be dealt with later.

“It’s only,” Balin suddenly repeats, blurting the words out as if they pain him, “I almost wish you hadn’t revealed the truth to Master Baggins, the whole truth of who you are, of what you are to each other. If the worst should happen… Thorin…” He shakes his head again. “You’re right in thinking this quest will be dangerous, too dangerous for one such as he – too dangerous for anyone with a right head on their shoulders, really,” he adds ruefully, looking around at their little circle, what’s left of the Royal House of Durin. “Who are we to go up against a dragon, after all? Merchants, miners, tinkers, toymakers…”

“Some of us still know how to fight,” Dwalin growls, looking first at his brother and then at Thorin. “And anyway, did not you meet with the other clan leaders? What of Dáin? Does he send reinforcements from the east to aid us?”

Thorin releases a long breath, in part glad for the change in topic away from his new-found One, though not relishing the news he must give them. “No,” he murmurs, sucking on his pipe and looking down at the rug again. “They will not come. They say this quest is ours and ours alone.”

“Which is why you will need all the help you can get,” a new voice cuts through their stunned, dismayed silence, and they all turn to see the wizard ducking through the round doorway to join them in the sitting room.

“We have _your_ help,” Thorin shoots back, glaring up at him, “do we not?”

“As much of it as I can spare, yes,” Gandalf grumbles, crossing the room in two long strides to drop onto a low sofa under the window. He makes a show of getting comfortable, setting the mug of ale he carries with him on a nearby table and producing a fork from within one of his long sleeves to dig into the meat pie in his other hand. Thorin’s stomach gives a small, unhappy gurgle, reminding him he has not eaten since setting out early this morning. “But I am no sneakthief, and the plan you devised for entering the mountain specifically calls for a _burglar_ —”

“Then we will make a new plan,” Thorin growls.

Gandalf squints up at him, for once shorter than the dwarves, seated as he is. “And so you mean to leave your soulmate behind, where anything might happen to him without your knowledge?” he asks at last.

“He will be safe here,” Thorin responds, frowning down at the wizard, and is gratified to hear murmurs of agreement from his cousins around him. “These are peaceful lands. So long as he remains anonymous, there is no reason his life should be in any greater danger than it was before.”

“Hm,” the wizard grunts as he sets aside his pie to instead retrieve his pipe and light it with a small point of flame from the tip of his finger. “Yes, none will come seeking him so long as they do not _know_ of his connection to you, but he could still very well fall into the Baranduin and drown tomorrow afternoon, and you would be powerless to do anything about it, far away as you will be.”

“Tharkûn—” Thorin starts again, beginning to grow really angry now. He knows what the wizard is doing, knows how he manipulates and works on the minds of mortals, spinning tales of such dark possibility as to force others to bend to his will. Thorin will not fall for it, will not bow to his influence and insinuations – yet the thought is there now, the tiniest fissure of doubt, of fear, beginning to run through the bedrock of Thorin’s determination.

“ _Not to mention,_ ” Gandalf pushes on, his voice rising to cut Thorin off, “Bilbo has been seen in the company of thirteen dwarves this evening, or rather has been seen taking said company into his home for the night. Perhaps those who bear you ill will would not immediately connect him to you personally, Thorin, but gossip travels quickly in the Shire and, believe me, the presence of dwarves in these parts is quite gossip-worthy amongst hobbits.” He puffs on his pipe and pins Thorin with his ancient, knowing gaze. “Such gossip could easily reach the wrong ears in Bree, and you yourself know what unsavory characters happen through those taverns.”

Thorin grits his teeth, turning away to face the fireplace once more. What the wizard claims is possible, he knows it, knows all too well from his own experiences when he was chasing rumors of his father’s movements. There is a price on his head, and those who would seek such a bounty would not hesitate to use his One against him, as leverage, as ransom, or simply as a means to weaken him, to snuff out that fragile little life just for the pain it would cause Thorin.

And his very presence here may have already condemned Master Baggins to such a fate.

“No.” Thorin shakes his head, steeling his resolve once more before looking over his shoulder at the old man. “If such foulness were wont to venture here, they would have done so already.” He turns to face the wizard fully, feet planted and hands fisted at his sides. “Besides, it is well known that the Dúnedain prowl beyond these borders. They have long kept the Shire safe and peaceful, and I see no reason why they should stop any time soon.”

“So you would rely on others, of whom you know little generally and nothing personally, to look after the other half of your soul,” Gandalf retorts, and Thorin cannot help bristling, for all that he knows the wizard is purposely trying to rile him up.

“I will rely on the same forces and anonymity that have afforded him a safe existence thus far!” he snarls in return. “And I certainly will not put his life in greater peril by bringing him along on this quest!”

“Not that it’s up to either of you whether I stay or go,” Bilbo Baggins’ voice says from the doorway, and Thorin turns in surprise to find the halfling himself bustling into the room with a tray of food held before him. Locating is not one of their bond gifts, it would seem, Thorin thinks with some chagrin; such a thing would certainly be useful with such a silent, quick-footed little creature as his One. Master Baggins sets his tray down on one of the side tables before turning to frown first at Gandalf and then at Thorin. “I could hear you lot arguing from all the way down the hall, you know,” he says, and the implied reprimand is perfectly clear to Thorin without his having to say it: _So much for not disturbing me again tonight._

“Apologies,” Thorin says, shooting a glare over towards the wizard. “We were speaking only of nonsense, in any case.”

Gandalf makes a noise of disgust back in his throat, levers himself up from his sofa, and, taking his ale and his pie with him, marches from the room in a huff. “I am surrounded by fools!” is his parting remark before he disappears down the hallway once more.

Dwalin spits a curse in Khuzdul at the wizard’s back, earning a mildly scolding look from his brother.

“We all ought to get off to bed,” Óin comments, already shuffling toward the door himself, his ear trumpet tucked safely back into his belt. “We’ve a long journey ahead tomorrow, lads.”

“Aye,” Glóin agrees, following Óin and Dwalin, and adds in a loud stage-whisper, though he thankfully slips into Khuzdul first, “ _and we should give the lovebirds here some time alone._ ”

Thorin glares at him, but he catches Balin’s smile even as the older dwarf rolls his eyes. “Master Baggins,” Balin says, turning to the hobbit, “thank you kindly for your hospitality, even if it was… _unexpectedly_ required.”

“You’re most welcome,” Bilbo Baggins replies stiffly, apparently caught between dutifully fulfilling his role as host and being utterly put out at the way his home has been invaded.

Thorin can sympathize with that latter feeling, he thinks – and then blinks, frowning at that strange turn his thoughts have taken.

“Well, it’s greatly appreciated, in any case,” Balin smiles at him, then adds, with a twinkle in his eye, “Oh, and – welcome to the family.”

“The—?” Master Baggins starts in confusion, but Balin is already following the others out, his hands clasped behind his back as he goes and studiously avoiding Thorin’s glare.

“I find I must apologize for my kin once more,” Thorin sighs, drawing the hobbit’s gaze back to him. The fact that they are suddenly alone together, for the very first time, sends a bolt of lightning skittering up and down Thorin’s spine and sets his skin to tingling, almost aching with the urge to reach out and touch, just once, just a single hand, a finger even, just to feel his One’s skin against his own – but he tamps those thoughts down and straightens his back, looking down at Master Baggins with as much cool detachment as he can muster. “As I said before, we leave at first light tomorrow, and then we will trouble you no more.” He gives a single, stiff bow, and is just turning for the door when the hobbit’s voice stops him.

“Oh, I, er—” Bilbo Baggins starts, stumbling over his words, and Thorin pauses, looking back at him. “It occurred to me that you hadn’t had a chance at any supper,” he finally says, gesturing to the tray he’d brought in with him earlier. Thorin follows the motion of his hand to survey the tray’s contents: a bowl of hearty stew, several thick slices of bread with a dish of butter alongside, a tankard of ale as well as a large glassful of deep red wine, a thick wedge of cheese, some boiled root vegetables glistening with salt and butter in another bowl… It is a veritable feast compared to the road fare Thorin has been used to of late, and he can do nothing but stare at the food for several long seconds.

“Is it alright?” Bilbo asks, twisting his hands together anxiously. “I scrounged together what I could, but to be honest your companions have rather eaten me out of house and home in a single meal!”

“It is… more than enough,” Thorin murmurs, his eyes still wide, and begins to take a step towards the table, before thinking better of it. Reaching inside his surcoat, he pulls out the wad of carefully-inscribed papers Balin had handed off to him earlier, and steps back over to the fireplace, half-unfolding it as he goes. He is sure Balin and young Ori had drafted as near perfect a document as they possibly could, accounting for every contingency in iron-clad language so as to define precisely what they expect from their burglar, as well as to forestall any claims of unfair or duplicitous behavior on their parts – especially important when employing an outsider.

Such a thing is wholly unnecessary now, though. Redundant, and some might even say disgraceful in these circumstances. He looks down at Ori’s close, careful penmanship on the topmost page for one moment longer, and then tosses the whole packet into the flames.

“What was that?” Master Baggins asks, pulling Thorin from his thoughts. He is all unwilling curiosity when Thorin looks back at him, his hands still clasped in front of his chest as his wide hazel eyes dart from Thorin to the fire and then back again.

“It… _was_ to be your contract,” Thorin answers slowly, moving over towards the table and the hobbit’s offering of supper rather than allowing himself to gaze down at him any longer.

“Contract?”

“A contract of employment and promise of repayment for the services of a burglar to enter the Lonely Mountain,” Thorin explains as he pulls a chair over to the table. The hobbit’s face scrunches up at the word ‘burglar,’ but Thorin forces himself to turn away, to act as if he has not seen and instead turn his attention to his meal. “One fourteenth of all the wealth therein,” he continues, “in exchange for retrieving the Arkenstone, the symbol of the king, from amongst the dragon’s hoard.”

“D-dragon?!” he hears Bilbo Baggins choke on the word, and the hobbit’s sudden, palpable spike of fear has Thorin looking at him again, half rising from his seat, almost afraid the little creature is about to faint dead away. He waves Thorin off, though, his hands covering his face as he backs away several paces until he stumbles backward into one of the plush armchairs near the fireplace. “Just what had Gandalf thought to sign me up for?” he moans, his voice weak and muffled behind his hands.

“Are you alright?” Thorin asks after several silent seconds, still standing awkwardly by his chair, frowning down at this skittish little thing the gods have graced him with, while Bilbo clearly struggles to regain his composure.

“Yes, yes – or I soon will be,” Bilbo Baggins says, dropping his hands from his face at last. Something to drink would likely settle his nerves, Thorin surmises, and crosses to him with the cup of wine in hand just as the hobbit looks up, saying, “Perhaps a spot of tea— Oh.”

Bilbo stares at the wine for a moment, then looks up at Thorin for an even longer moment, before finally reaching and taking the glass with both hands. Thorin cannot shake the impression that Master Baggins very intentionally avoids letting his fingers brush against Thorin’s, but he relinquishes the glass and steps back without comment.

The drink seems to do the trick, in any case, and after a minute or two of quietly sipping at it, the hobbit finally speaks again. “Well,” he says, shaking himself slightly, “I must say I think it’s a good thing I’m not going with you on this quest thing, as I am not a burglar at all, much less a dragon fighter, regardless of whatever that meddling old wizard may have told you.”

“I would not expect you to be,” Thorin responds, sparing half a glance for the would-be contract, now burned nearly to ashes in the bottom of the fireplace. Even if he were to accompany them… But no, it is better this way, as Bilbo said. Safer. “You must stay here; of that I am certain.”

The hobbit is watching him with slightly narrowed eyes when Thorin looks at him again – shrewd and assessing, if Thorin had to put a word to that look. “I would ask what you _would_ expect me to be,” Bilbo Baggins says softly, still watching him – _judging_ , Thorin thinks now – “but as _I_ fully expect to never see you again, it is an entirely moot point.” With that, he drains the last of the wine from his cup, hops to his feet, and turns to stride purposefully from the room, offering only a final, “Good night, Master Oakenshield,” over his shoulder as he goes.

Thorin watches him leave, struggling, even as he sits still in his chair, to contain the sensation of falling that has overtaken him, just as it had earlier in the front hall each time his One rejected him and denied their bond in no uncertain terms. This is often the way, of course, when a dwarf finds their One outside their own race: the other peoples of Arda do not always feel as they do, cannot always sense the will of the Maker bringing them together, and while happiness is never a guarantee even with another dwarf, it is even more flighty and fleeting a thing with an outsider. Some part of Thorin, the part free of all pride, or shame, or dignity, wants nothing more than to follow the hobbit wherever he is currently, to throw himself at his feet and plead his case, to try and see if Thorin could just make him understand, if only he spoke long and sincerely enough.

But no. Such a display would be beneath him, beneath the leader his Company needs him to be. And it would likely not help, in any case, but would only further annoy Master Baggins with the insistent intrusion. No, it is better that they should be apart, that Thorin should go and his One should stay here, at least until Thorin has had time to process all that has happened in the last few hours. Until he has a home and a kingdom to offer his One, the riches and comfort that his soulmate deserves, anything more than the empty title of his name.

Not for the first time that evening, Thorin wishes his father and mother were here to advise him, or his brother, or even his sister, with her brusque, imperious approach to affection. It comes as no surprise to him, then, when he finds himself humming a familiar tune as he eats, and then later murmuring the words to himself while lingering at the table over his pipe and ale, old poetry of a home long gone, of family who should have been here to see this day with him, of everything he should have been able to offer his One, if only the world were a little different.

 

* * *

 

“We could send word to Dís, you know,” Dwalin suggests as they mount their ponies the next morning. The rest of the Company streams out behind them in the road outside their rented stables at the edge of town, performing final inspections of their gear and luggage and mounting up themselves. “She’d come and sweep the little bit off with her if she knew who he was, keep him safe until your return.”

“And remove him forcefully from the only home he’s ever known, with even less grace than what the wizard was attempting to do,” Thorin replies. It’s not as if he hasn’t had the same thought, not as if he hadn’t lain awake all last night trying to imagine what each of his parents would tell him to do in this situation, were they still alive. He sighs, shaking his head. “No. It will be best if he simply stays here, out of sight of the world.” And out of mind for Thorin himself, he adds silently.

“Thorin…”

“I cannot lock him in a cage, Dwalin,” Thorin growls, frowning over at his shield-brother as he wheels his pony around, before turning his gaze to the rest of the Company, “even if it would be for his own good.” He waits for all in their number to climb into their saddles and then to give a wave towards him and Dwalin at the front of the line as a signal that they are ready, and then Thorin turns round once more, to where the wizard sits impatiently astride his horse further down the lane. Thorin shakes his pony’s reins and squeezes his heels into her sides, starting the line forward, and cannot help muttering to himself, his thoughts still back on the hobbithole in the hill, with its be-runed green door and the little unassuming halfling who resides behind it, “No matter how small and weak he is…”

The rising sun is in their eyes as they set out, and for a time he and Dwalin jostle each other back and forth for the place directly behind the wizard’s taller form and taller steed to shield them from the blinding light. The good-natured roughhousing is a welcome distraction from the brooding thoughts that have plagued Thorin since the previous evening. He is just thinking that he must set aside all thoughts of his One and of what life might have been had some things gone very, very differently and turn all his attention instead to the quest ahead of them, when a voice cries out behind them, calling for them to wait. Thorin twists in his saddle, turning disbelieving eyes on the form of one Bilbo Baggins, a travelling pack weighing down his slight shoulders and his arms waving in the air to draw the Company’s attention as he runs to catch up with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Boost this chapter on tumblr](http://jezunya.tumblr.com/post/172190655199/to-halve-and-to-hold-chapter-2-now-up-on-ao3)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“So we can call you Uncle Bilbo?!” Kíli asks excitedly._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thank you everyone who has read, commented, or left kudos! Yall are wonderful <3

The look Thorin Oakenshield levels at Bilbo as he wheels his pony around and comes trotting back down the line of mounted dwarves is truly thunderous, almost murderous Bilbo would say. He shuffles back half a pace, then another, and glances about anxiously at the rest of the Company as they come circling closer, but always finds his gaze pulled back to Thorin.

“ _What_ ,” the dwarf lord demands when he draws even with Bilbo, “are you _doing?!_ ”

Bilbo purses his lips, but clenches his hands against the urge to wring them anxiously in front of himself and instead glares up at Thorin. “I’m coming with you,” he says, feeling like a sullen tween, and then adds, looking around, “with all of you, I mean. I’m coming on the quest.”

He can see Gandalf absolutely _grinning_ from his place at the front of the column, even as Thorin continues to glower down at him. The king draws in a breath through his nose, like a bull preparing to charge, and Bilbo braces himself, rather expecting an angry tirade that ends with his being ordered back home. He has no intention of doing anything of the sort, of course – he’d meant what he’d said last night, that neither the wizard nor some dwarf whom he’s known for less than a day will be allowed to tell him what he can or cannot do.

Thorin only narrows his eyes, though, looking down at Bilbo like he’s some incomprehensible, wholly alien creature.

“You were saying?” the big bald dwarf riding next to Thorin quips, smirking over at his king as he leans forward to rest his folded forearms on the pommel of his saddle.

Thorin shoots the other dwarf a quick snarl, looks down at Bilbo once more, and then turns his furious gaze onto the rest of the Company gathered around. “Get him a pony!” he barks.

“What? No no no, that won’t be necessary,” Bilbo starts to protest, spinning around with a hand raised to stop them doing just that. Hobbits are not meant for horseback, and gentlehobbits with animal hair allergies like Bilbo least of all. “I’m quite an accomplished walker, I assure you,” he says, though none of the dwarves pay him any mind as they select one of the pack animals and begin tossing bags to each other for repositioning, “been all over the Shire, I really don’t—”

“Master Baggins,” Thorin bites out, cutting off his words and drawing Bilbo’s gaze back around to him, “you may ride on your own or with me. _Take your pick._ ”

Bilbo bites his tongue at that and turns away to wait discontentedly while the dwarves shift their packs of supplies about until there is at last an open saddle for him – one _without_ a dwarf lap already in it, thank you very much.

Behind him, the bald dwarf – he really must make an effort to learn their names, he decides, now that he is, in fact, going to be spending more than a single evening with them all – laughs quietly and says to Thorin, “Bit of an ‘arisi after all, eh? I didn’t expect him to turn up in the first place.”

Thorin snorts but doesn’t give any other reply, and Bilbo peeks over his shoulder back at the two of them, wondering what, exactly, the big dwarf had just called him.

“Here you are, Mister Boggins!” one of the young dwarves, the dark-haired one, says cheerfully, as he leads the newly unburdened pony up to Bilbo.

“Oh, actually, it’s—” Bilbo is just beginning to say, when Thorin’s voice snaps out, “ _Baggins_ , Kíli!”

Bilbo looks over his shoulder once more to glare at Thorin, while his young helper simply answers, carefree as ever, “Ah, right!” Thorin holds Bilbo’s gaze unapologetically, blue eyes hooded, holding some emotion Bilbo would prefer not to examine too closely just now. And if those eyes happen to be the exact same color as the clear morning sky behind Thorin, well, that doesn’t bear examining either. He turns away, reaching reluctantly for the pony’s saddle, and pulls himself up.

Or rather, he tries to.

The stirrup is much higher off the ground than he would like, and his arms are already raised nearly above his head with the height of the animal and so are unable to do much in the way of lifting him off the ground. If he can just get his foot into the—

A pair of large, firm hands close suddenly over his waist, warm even through his jacket and waistcoat, and then he is rising, being lifted off his feet and up, up, up, until he can swing his leg over and settle into the saddle, turning to look down and thank young Kí—

Thorin.

“Are you comfortable enough?” Thorin asks softly, though his gaze is still hard as he looks up at Bilbo. His hand lingers for just a moment where it has slid down to Bilbo’s knee before dropping away. Without waiting for an answer, Thorin leans down to begin adjusting the stirrup nearest him to an appropriate height for Bilbo’s legs, and, on the pony’s other side, the blond youngster hops down from his own steed to come adjust the other one.

“Er… Yes. Thank you,” Bilbo answers at last, willing his face to remain clear of the blush he can feel attempting to rise on his skin. That he is both handsome and strong – and has a lovely, almost hypnotic singing voice – does not actually negate the arrogance and officiousness Bilbo has witnessed from Thorin Oakenshield just since last night, he reminds himself somewhat viciously. Again, those sky-blue eyes glance up at him and narrow ever so slightly, as if the dwarf is attempting to puzzle him out, but Thorin only gives a small nod and turns away to remount his own pony.

“Move out!” Thorin calls to the Company at large once he is reseated, and move they do.

It’s not as bad as Bilbo might have imagined. He’s ridden before, of course, a little, but it’s been many, many years. Not since he was a child, really, and his mother had held him in her lap as she urged the pony into a trot, then a canter, while his father had looked on in terror. It had been the closest thing to flying a hobbit had ever come, his childish mind had decided, and his mother had laughed and laughed and finally agreed when he’d imparted that thought to her. Still, as a sensible, respectable, adult gentlehobbit, a full-grown Baggins of Bag End, Bilbo does not at all like how far he is from the ground.

“So,” a voice says beside him, and Bilbo gratefully sets aside all thoughts of tumbling head over heels out of his saddle to a certain death by trampling, to instead look over at the young blond dwarf who’d helped with his stirrup earlier. “Which name do you prefer to go by?” he asks.

Before Bilbo can even begin to formulate a reply, the other young dwarf, Kíli, asks from his other side, “Baggins is a clan name, isn’t it?”

Bilbo looks back and forth between them for a moment before deciding it’s simplest to answer the most recent question rather than trying to sort out the first one. “Er, yes. Yes, it’s my family name,” he says, lifting a hand to rub at the itch developing around one of his eyes.

“And are hobbits particular about being addressed by only your clan names right at first?” the blond one asks. “ _Mister_ Baggins, you know?”

Bilbo turns towards him now; at least he’ll not get a crick in his neck from looking in one direction for too long, he thinks. He scrubs at his other eye for a moment, before catching himself and forcing his hand back down to the reins again. “I… suppose, in formal settings, we might be. Certainly until you know the person well, or if you’re closely related. But as I expect we’re all going to be spending quite a bit of time together for the next while, you may as well dispense with all that and simply call me by my first name.”

“So we can call you Uncle Bilbo?!” Kíli asks excitedly from his other side.

“Well, I— Wait, what?” Bilbo does hear a small crack in his neck this time, he twists so quickly to look over at the dark-haired dwarf.

“You’re Uncle Thorin’s One, after all,” the blond one says, and offers a shrug and a small, slightly sheepish smile when Bilbo looks at him again.

“I am not his—” Bilbo starts heatedly, but then stops himself and takes a deep, calming breath. He has the strangest feeling for just a moment, almost like the bottom has dropped out of his stomach, like hot tears are beginning to prickle behind his eyes – but that’s just his allergies acting up, of course. Letting his breath out again and feeling a bit more like himself, he looks at the young blond dwarf and asks, “Thorin is your uncle? Both of you?” He glances at Kíli, who is smiling and nodding. “So… does that make you Kíli Oakenshield, then?”

Both youngsters give startled laughs that go on for far longer than Bilbo thinks is really warranted, but at last the blond one seems to get ahold of himself again and answers, “No, Oakenshield is more of a title, a name Uncle Thorin earned in battle a long time ago, before we were even born.”

“He’s basically a legend,” Kíli puts in, grinning proudly at Bilbo.

“Oh,” Bilbo breathes – whimpers, almost, if he were to be entirely honest with himself, but he doesn’t see much point in doing that right at this moment. A legendary warrior king, with a whole name based on his amazing feats in battle, had eaten supper in Bilbo’s house. Had shared wine with him. Had lifted him up onto his pony like he weighed nothing at all. Had claimed that Bilbo is his—

Nope. Best stop that thought right in its tracks, before it begins to sound too much like the fairytales his mother used to read to him at bedtime.

“I’m Fíli, son of Víli,” the blond dwarf goes on, smiling a bit like he’s decided to take pity on Bilbo, before nodding to the other one, “and my younger brother, Kíli, son of Víli.”

“Ah,” Bilbo acknowledges them, relieved to at last have a name to go with each of their faces, and can’t help rubbing at his eyes with the back of his wrist once more. “And Víli is…?” He glances around once, then turns his gaze ahead, to the big dwarf still riding alongside Thorin, the most likely candidate if he had to guess.

“Our father,” Fíli answers, then, softer, “but he isn’t among the Company today. He died when we were both still small.”

“Oh.” Bilbo looks at Fíli once more, and this time the hollow feeling in his middle seems more natural, more expected, more his own. “I’m sorry.” He purses his lips, sniffles a little, and then adds, looking over at Fíli again, “I lost both my parents some years back, when I was still rather young myself.”

Fíli nods, looking contemplative, then smiles again. “Anyway – Thorin is our mother’s brother. We don’t tend to use family names amongst ourselves very often, but then we’re all essentially family as it is.” He indicates the bald dwarf Bilbo had noticed before with a jerk of his chin. “That’s Dwalin,” Fíli explains, then looks over his shoulder to gesture briefly to the older, white-haired dwarf with the long, curling beard, who’s chatting with another elder, grey of hair and elaborately braided, “and that’s his brother Balin. They’re our cousins. Óin and Glóin,” another nod to each, “are also our cousins, though a little further removed than Balin and Dwalin.”

“Glóin has a son our age,” Kíli comments then, “just a few years younger than me. Gimli hasn’t quite come of age yet, so his parents wouldn’t let him come along,” he adds, smirking.

Fíli nods, chuckling, and then goes on with his introductions. Dori, Nori, and Ori – another young dwarf, just between Fíli and Kíli in age, they say – are distant relations, of the same clan as them at least, plus, Fíli adds enigmatically, being connected by marriage. Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur come last of all, and Fíli explains, “They’re Broadbeams, originally from out west, not like the rest of us Longbeards. They’re good friends, though – their kind took us in after Erebor fell and our people needed a new home.”

“Right,” Bilbo says, sniffling again. He’s had to learn the names of countless cousins and acquaintances ever since he was small, so this shouldn’t be too much of a challenge – though, admittedly, he’d known most of those hobbits his entire life. At least there seems to be a pattern to these dwarves, he thinks, scrunching up his nose, what with the rhyming and the little family groups of twos and threes and—

He quite loses his trail of thought when he’s overtaken by a truly violent sneeze.

Kíli says something Bilbo can’t make out, something that makes his brother chuckle and nod, but then another sneeze forces its way out before Bilbo can ask, and then another. He tries to cover his mouth and nose with his elbow, one hand still clutching desperately at the pony’s reins while the other fumbles blindly through his pockets for his handkerchief. “Oh— Blast—” His pockets turning up empty, he struggles to pull his travelling pack around into his lap, searching through it a bit frantically while he tries, but ultimately fails, to stave off another sneeze.

“Are you alright, Uncle Bilbo?” Kíli asks beside him, no longer grinning but actually sounding a touch concerned now as he draws his pony closer to Bilbo’s.

“I am not y—” He’s cut off by another violent sneeze that turns into a hacking cough the next moment, air and spittle going down the wrong tube and just making everything worse. “It’s the horsehair,” he gasps at last. “I’m having a reaction, and I can’t find my handkerchief.” He sniffles loudly again but resists the urge to simply wipe his nose on his sleeve like a grubby child. “We have to stop,” he goes on, looking up and raising his voice to call towards Gandalf at the front of the line. “I have to go back and get my handkerchief, I simply cannot go on for days like this…” He trails off when he meets Thorin’s gaze, finding the dwarf has turned in his saddle to frown back at him, and can’t help but wonder just how long he’s been watching Bilbo.

The dwarf king glares at him for a moment longer, then looks past Bilbo to the rest of the Company to growl, “Keep moving,” before he at last turns away again.

Bilbo glares at his back for a second, then, feeling another sneeze building, he finally gives in, squeezes his eyes shut, and scrubs his sleeve across his face, hoping to alleviate the itch inside his nose before it can explode outward again.

“Here,” Thorin’s gruff voice says then, much closer than before, far too close, and when Bilbo opens his eyes again Thorin Oakenshield is riding right beside him, his nephews having fallen back to make room for him. In his hand, shoved almost right into Bilbo’s face, is a small wad of whitish cloth.

Bilbo frowns at him but gingerly plucks the cloth from his hand nonetheless, glad at least that the dwarf’s rough nature has prevented his offer from seeming at all _gallant_. “Thank you,” he says coldly, and finds that he has to force down a strange sense of regret, not unlike what he’d felt last night when Thorin had handed him the glass of wine to clear his head. It is truly frustrating to be so continually overcome with a desire to touch someone whose behavior he finds so reprehensible, lust and dislike seeming to war in Bilbo every time he’s near the dwarf. That – combined with the twist of irrational sadness in his gut after every time he resists that temptation – makes Bilbo only more determined to avoid any sort of physical contact between them.

Still, he was raised too well to not be grateful – and gracious – he thinks as he dabs first at his eyes and then at his nose. The cloth is a light linen, slightly threadbare in places but worn to an almost silken softness. It’s larger than one of Bilbo’s own handkerchiefs and free of any sort of embroidered initials or other embellishments – so at least he won’t be reminded of its owner every time he looks at it.

“I hope it will serve adequately for your needs,” Thorin says, his words sounding stiff and a little forced. After a moment, he adds, “I normally use it to clean my weapons.”

Bilbo jerks the cloth away from his face, rearing back a little to frown over at the dwarf again.

“It’s clean, I assure you,” Thorin sighs.

“Oh. Yes. Well. Not anymore,” Bilbo replies, and blows his nose loudly. When he’s done, he can’t be sure, but he almost thinks he catches a slight chuckle from Thorin Oakenshield. “Thank you,” he says again, folding the handkerchief away to be rinsed out when they next stop for a rest. “I, er… I may have packed in a bit of a rush,” he admits then, the silence making him antsy, especially as Thorin continues to ride alongside him, giving no indication that he intends to rejoin his friend at the front or fall in with his nephews behind them.

Thorin hums in acknowledgement, not really looking at Bilbo, the sound low and gravelly and making Bilbo’s toes want to curl against his pony’s stirrups. “We’ll have to see what gear we can acquire for you in Bree,” he says after a long moment of silence, “but our budget is tight, Master Baggins. You will have to make do with what little we can find.”

“I wasn’t meaning to beg for you to provide for me,” Bilbo responds, a bit snippily. “I dare say I’ve got the essentials well enough in hand. Just a few little things might have slipped my mind in my rush to catch up with y… er, with the Company.”

Thorin is quiet for several more seconds, seems to be chewing on his words, before he looks over at Bilbo and bluntly asks, “Why did you come?”

“I… Well…” Bilbo makes the mistake of glancing over toward Thorin, and just like the previous evening he finds himself caught by the intensity of the dwarf’s blue eyes, how he seems to be trying to see right through to Bilbo’s core. “Well, because…”

_Because you don’t get to tell me what to do._

That had been the thought that had followed him out of the sitting room the previous evening, with Thorin’s statement that he “ _must_ stay here” still ringing in his ears. Perhaps it had been the wine going overly quick to his head, but Bilbo had grumbled and griped his way back to his bedroom after leaving the dwarf king with his supper, complaining to himself about meddling wizards and uninvited guests and determined to simply lie down and put the whole mess from his mind.

But then there was the singing.

“I suppose it was a bit of a whim, really,” he says at last, looking away. Then, hoping to change the subject, he rushes on, “I, er, couldn’t help overhearing you last night.” The walls in Bag End are not exactly thin, made of the earth the smial was carved from and lined with the best hardwood to be found anywhere in or around the Shire, but still, Thorin’s voice had seemed to follow him out of the sitting room, down the hall, and around the corner into his bedroom. He hadn’t been able to entirely make out the words, but the voice singing them was filled with such longing, mournful and nostalgic all at once, that it had seemed to burrow right into Bilbo’s chest and settle in his bones. “That song you were singing was… beautiful. Really,” he says, and glances at the dwarf sidelong.

Thorin grimaces and turns his face away. “It is better with a group.”

Bilbo huffs. “I find that hard to believe,” he mutters, but gets no response.

He had lain on his bed last night, listening to Thorin’s distant voice singing of far-off places, and had eventually drifted off to sleep like that – only to jerk awake some indeterminate amount of time later, with Bag End dark and quiet around him, and images of snow-capped mountain peaks still dancing before his eyes, along with hot smithing irons and staircases that went down, down, deep down into the earth…

He’d begun packing without entirely realizing what he was doing, there in the middle of the night, with the dwarves’ snores still echoing softly down the hallways of his familial home. A few different changes of clothes, a comb and bar of soap for his hair, he had to be presentable when he finally met them, after all, these relations he was going off to see for the first time…

That thought had finally been strange enough to shake him more fully awake, and he’d sat down on the edge of his bed, frowning at the bag in his lap. He’d been dreaming of… someone… someone whose opinion of him mattered, whom he was terribly desirous to impress, whose approval he hoped to earn. Knitting his brows, he tried to recall the faces of the people in his dream: they were his mother and father, and yet not. There was something off about them, strangers, faces he’s never seen before, and yet the dream had been suffused with such a sense of comfort, familiarity, that Bilbo still couldn’t shake it off. Their smiling faces had seemed to whisper, in answer to some question Bilbo hadn’t asked, _You know what to do…_

He’d fallen asleep again at some point, curled around his half-packed bag atop his bedspread, and while he hadn’t had any more dreams of mountains and imagined strangers, he did dream of helping his mother in the kitchen of Bag End, making her famous honey wheat loaf. As she alternately stirred or kneaded or shaped, she had asked him, quite calmly, like it was of no greater importance than the weather outside, why on earth he would turn his back on something he’d been waiting for his entire life.  

Bilbo had opened his eyes in what seemed to him to be the very next instant, with his bewildered reply still building on his tongue and pale morning light filtering down onto his face from the windows of his bedroom. The smial was utterly silent. He’d sat up slowly, the pack still in his lap, and all of a sudden he’d been overwhelmed by such a deep sense of loss, like he was missing something terribly important, like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was moving steadily away from him. Without another thought, he had been up and moving, barely pausing to even throw on fresh clothes and grab some nuts and dried fruit that had been overlooked the night before in his pantry. The dwarves had left without him already, but if he hurried, he could catch them before they got too far, he was sure—

And then he’d stopped, just for a moment, right on the threshold of his front door, almost as if he’d run into an invisible wall. Here he was about to step out into the world as he never had before, when an entirely different feeling had washed through him: something like resignation, tinged with relief, like some part of him was trying to accept the idea that it was better – safer – if he simply stopped and gave up, let go, if he just stayed here, where everything was calm and quiet and peaceful…

He didn’t know how he knew, but something about that feeling had been undeniably foreign, like it was being pushed on him by some outside force, and Bilbo had fought viciously, instinctively against it, slamming Bag End’s green door behind him and then turning to take off down Bagshot Row like his very life depended on it.

“This journey is neither the time nor place for _whims_ , Master Baggins,” Thorin is saying, his gruff, disapproving voice pulling Bilbo back into the present moment. He’s frowning at Bilbo once more when Bilbo looks over at him. “Your life may very well depend on your staying close and doing as you are told over the next few months. I hope you know that.”

Bilbo blinks, confused and for a moment wondering if he had somehow spoken his thoughts aloud without realizing it. But no – the dwarf king is simply being as dramatic and overbearing and controlling as Bilbo is beginning to suspect comes entirely naturally to him. “We’ll see,” he sniffs, and then pulls on his pony’s reins to slow her pace and fall back into the cluster of dwarves riding behind them, decidedly turning his attention to all of his travelling companions who are not Thorin Oakenshield.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't help thinking of that gif of Aiden Turner giggling at the camera as Martin Freeman struggles to get on his horse in the background. But ya know, I had to take it & make it shippy ;D
> 
> Khuzdul Terms  
> ‘Arisi – spark, ember
> 
> [Boost this chapter on tumblr](http://jezunya.tumblr.com/post/172440885894/to-halve-and-to-hold-chapter-3-is-now-on-ao3-so)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _There has been **something** passing between them since they met, though Thorin has as yet been unable to identify it._

They make it to the edge of the hobbits’ lands before nightfall, traveling east along the Great Road from Master Baggins’ home and into the region he tells them is known as Buckland, after one of the powerful families in the area. As they approach the bridge spanning the Brandywine river – as the locals call the great Baranduin in their colloquial vernacular – Master Baggins seems to hesitate, radiating unease as he falls further and further back in the line of the Company’s ponies. Whenever Thorin glances back at him, he seems to be fidgeting in his saddle and twisting to look longingly over his shoulder, back the way they’ve come.

Thorin slows his own steed, letting the others pass him as if he intends only to get a count of their number and make sure they’ve not lost any stragglers – as ludicrous as that would be while they are yet in such safe, peaceful lands. He pulls up alongside Master Baggins’ pony, measuring his words and preparing to suggest that, even now that they’re a full day’s ride from his home, he can still choose to turn around and go back. Surely the halfling can find some relation or acquaintance to stay the night with here in Buckland, still in the confines of the Shire as they are, and then return home on the morrow. He would still be safe, and they could avoid this folly of taking such an untried creature out into the wilds with them...

Thorin is only just opening his mouth to speak, when, as if sensing his intentions, Bilbo Baggins’ gaze snaps over to him with a ferocious glare, and Thorin feels his words die on his tongue. Turning away, the hobbit urges his pony to pick up her pace and goes charging across the bridge after the others, leaving Thorin behind.

Thorin grits his teeth, mentally cursing the foolishness of hobbits, and nudges his own steed faster as well.

The halfling did not actually _know_ what Thorin intended to say, of that he is sure, he thinks as he watches the back of Bilbo Baggins’ head. True telepathy is rare, and can take months, even years, to fully develop between bondmates. And Thorin has certainly not heard the halfling’s voice in his mind; that would have been unmistakable, and such things always flow both ways. Still, there has been _something_ passing between them just in the few hours since they met, though he has as yet been unable to identify it.

Well, besides the dreams, of course.

Sharing dreams is nothing special, though – mental and spiritual barriers are lowered, weakened, in sleep, as the subconscious mind reaches across Arda and across time, tapping into the living stone of the world from which all dwarves were formed, calling to loved ones who have gone ahead to the Halls of Waiting and to the other part of a dwarf’s soul, wherever they may be. Many dwarves have come to know their One years before ever meeting in waking life through the dream encounters they share. Last night was the first time Thorin had ever experienced such a thing himself – though, like so many things about his soulmate thus far, it had only raised more questions rather than answering them.

The hobbit woman was clearly someone special to Master Baggins, Thorin thinks, recalling the image of the small figure elbow-deep in flour and plaiting dough for baking that he had seen in his sleep the previous night. She was obviously someone he loved dearly, someone who brought with her such an intense feeling of nostalgia, of loss, that it makes Thorin's heart clench just remembering it.

Master Baggins had said he is not married, though, it occurs to Thorin, that doesn’t mean he never has been. Or that he isn’t pining for someone, for this halfling woman, whoever she is, nor does it mean that he didn't decide to come on this quest specifically to escape some heartache haunting him in the Shire…

Clenching his teeth against the jealousy that spikes through his chest at that thought – a base, dishonorable feeling, as the halfling is not _Thorin’s_ in any way that he may be jealous of his attention, much less his affections – he spurs his pony on and attempts to push away all thoughts of his infuriating One.

They make camp off in the hills north of the Great Road just as the sun begins to disappear behind the western horizon. They are beyond the borders of the Shire now, about halfway to Bree, or so Glóin tells them when he checks the map he carries, and should reach the human settlement before the next evening. While the wizard wanders off to do whatever it is wizards do in their free time and the dwarves of the Company draw lots for the night’s watch and begin laying out their gear and bedrolls in the usual familial groupings around the fire, Master Baggins again hesitates. He hangs back by his pony after he has dismounted and fiddles with the straps of his little travelling pack instead of stepping forward to take his rightful place amongst them: at Thorin’s side, if he wishes it, or at least amongst his kin, though Thorin knows without having to ask that he would be rebuffed if he were to suggest such a thing to the hobbit.

He makes a rather pathetic figure, though, standing there by himself, seeming ever more awkward and uncertain with every passing moment. Finally, with his own bedroll spread out on the ground and Fíli already laying his gear to one side of Thorin’s, Thorin can bear it no longer, and he turns to bid Master Baggins stop dithering and come join them – only to be anteceded by Kíli.

“Over here, Uncle Bilbo!” Thorin’s young sister-son calls, waving from where he sits on Fíli’s far side, before hopping to his feet and dashing over to where the halfling still stands with their pack animals.

“Er… Kíli, I’m really not…” Master Baggins protests weakly, though he doesn’t resist as Kíli takes him by the wrist and pulls him over toward their group.

“We saved you a spot – see? – right here,” Kíli goes on, completely ignoring the hobbit’s words and indicating the open patch of grass beside his own bedroll.

“Oh, er… That’s very kind of you,” Master Baggins mumbles in reply, and begins to slowly shrug off his pack.

“We dwarves always stick close by our families – you’ll learn that soon enough,” Kíli says, grinning up at Master Baggins as he flops back down onto his own bedroll and immediately turns to inspecting his bow and quiver and asking Fíli if he thinks they ought to go looking for some small game for supper tonight.

Master Baggins stands a moment longer, as if frozen by Kíli’s careless words, and then his eyes dart over to meet Thorin’s, as if waiting for him – or _daring_ him, even – to comment. Very deliberately, Thorin turns away and busies himself with his own pack. What the halfling chooses to do or not do is none of his concern at this point, and certainly does not require his approval – and neither is Thorin fool enough to believe that Master Baggins’ acceptance of his sister-sons’ easy camaraderie in any way means that he accepts the fact of their soulbond, any more than he did a day ago.

Balin, on Thorin’s other side, offers him a sympathetic smile and kindly speaks of everything _but_ Shirelings and Ones as they settle in for the evening, though his words do little to settle Thorin’s agitation. The sight of Dwalin sitting beyond Balin, with Nori at his side, both of them, in their own way, happy and relaxed and so very _aware_ of each other, so often seeming to move as a single entity, perfectly in tandem though they are such disparate pieces of the same whole… That sight does not help much, either.

Bombur serves them a lean stew to go with their hardtack, and then all but those who have drawn the first watch turn in for the night. Thorin lies back on his bedroll, staring up at the stars and habitually looking for the familiar constellation of Durin’s Crown, and wonders if sleep will find him at all tonight. The thoughts continually swirling through his head and the sharp awareness of Master Baggins lying only a few paces away both seem to suggest not…

 

* * *

 

He’s running.

The forest is dark and terrible, dense and twisted, ever-changing, shadows leaping about him, changing form, attempting to trick him and draw him into their depths.

He thought at first that he was running away from something, or perhaps someone, some terrible creature that is hunting him, pursuing him through the trees with an unquenchable hatred.

All of a sudden, he knows, somehow, that there is safety to be had just ahead, a light at the end of the path where the trees break and the forest ends, that he will be saved if he can only reach it…

 

* * *

 

Dori nudges Thorin awake for his turn on watch, the last before the sun rises and they resume their journey for the day. Without really thinking, as Thorin rises from his bedroll he casts a glance over his sister-sons and then onto the hobbit where he lies between Kíli and Bofur. Unsurprisingly, Master Baggins’ blankets are twisted about him and his face is scrunched into a scowl, though his sleep seems relatively untroubled now. The dream was likely the halfling’s originally – it’s not as if Thorin is terribly frightened of trees, after all.

The last few hours of the night pass quickly enough, with Thorin alternately pacing around his half of the camp or sitting to gaze out at the rolling hills around them and trying to think about anything but Master Baggins. The others begin to rouse as the sky lightens and the wizard finally reappears from between the trees beyond their camp; those first to wake reach over to shake their companions awake as well.

No one touches Master Baggins, though.

After the second time Fíli loudly clears his throat next to Thorin, he finally looks up to find both his nephews giving him identical pointed – if also more than a little mischievous – looks. He sighs, drops the bag where he was stowing away his blankets again, and walks around them to where the halfling is still curled up on the ground. Master Baggins is, ultimately, Thorin’s responsibility, of course. He does not much like, however, the way the rest of the Company all seem to be carefully averting their eyes – and doing rather poor jobs of hiding their smiles – as if they think they have to give him and Master Baggins privacy, as if they are lovers sharing the first blush of affection.

With a small sigh, Thorin kneels by the hobbit’s head, looking down into his sleeping face. The urge to touch him is, once more, nearly overpowering: Thorin can imagine running his knuckles down one of those soft, strangely hairless cheeks, or drawing his hand through the golden tresses atop his head, feeling the short, gentle curl weave itself about his fingers. He could press his thumb just _there_ , where his lips are slightly parted in sleep, could cup his jaw in the palm of one hand, let his fingers wander up to test the feel of those pointed ears, draw him close, press their foreheads together, and…

Swallowing thickly, Thorin pulls his gaze away and forces himself to say, “Master Baggins.” When this elicits no response beyond a slight knitting of the halfling’s brows, he repeats himself, a little louder, and then, finally, with the absolute briefest of touches, he grasps Master Baggins’ shoulder and shakes him a little.

The hobbit’s eyes snap open, staring wide up at Thorin. “It’s… you…” he mumbles, and then frowns a little, before shaking himself and beginning to sit up. Thorin, with a mixture of both relief and disappointment, hastily backs away out of Master Baggins’ personal space. “Oh! Oh, goodness, I've slept quite late, haven't I?” he exclaims, looking around at the rest of the Company as they break camp.

“Yes,” is all Thorin says in response, at a loss for anything else, and turns to go back to his own gear.

Master Baggins shakes off his blankets and climbs to his feet – and then freezes, gasping in pain and drawing Thorin’s gaze sharply back to him.

“Are you hurt?” Thorin demands, striding back over to the hobbit, but Master Baggins only grimaces, shaking his head, and presses his hands into the small of his back.

“Just terribly sore,” he explains with a groan. “I’ve not ridden so much in a long, long time…” The halfling groans again, rubbing his hands over his lower back, then down his rear and onto his thighs, bending forward slightly as he does so.

Thorin attempts not to stare.

“ _You know, Uncle,_ ” Fíli drawls in Khuzdul, yet his expression appears perfectly deadpan when Thorin glances over at him, “ _I don’t think **that’s** how you’re supposed to use your time on watch._ ”

Thorin feels his face begin to flush, and looks around to glare at all the others as they fail to smother their snickers. From across the doused firepit, he meets the wizard’s narrowed gaze; the old Grey Wanderer raises one eyebrow at him.

“What was that?” Master Baggins asks, looking around as well before settling a frown on Fíli. “What’s so funny?”

“ _Nothing_ ,” Thorin replies, glaring down at his sister-sons, who each manage to look a little apologetic even while still fighting to keep from smiling too broadly. He turns his gaze on the rest of the Company. “There is absolutely nothing to laugh about here.”

He feels, rather than sees, Master Baggins’ unhappy gaze on him. The hobbit no doubt suspects the general theme of his nephew’s comments and the others’ laughter – and no doubt blames Thorin and their soulbond for such comments – even if he cannot understand their sacred tongue.

And even _that_ they will not be able to hide behind for long.

“Hurry up and make ready to leave!” Thorin barks, setting aside, for the moment, the thought of his duties in educating his One. There will be plenty of opportunities for that while they ride. “We’ve a long way to go yet and no time for idling!” The other dwarves all pick up the pace to do as they’re told, and, in the ensuing storm of activity, Thorin pulls Óin aside for a quick consultation.

They’re ready to get back on the road again before the hour is out, bags and gear all resecured on their ponies as the dwarves and one odd old man climb into their saddles. Thorin, however, waits, standing by his mount and watching the halfling slowly approach his own pony.

“As loath as I am to inflict my sneezes and wheezes on this poor animal again,” he’s saying to Bofur, who walks along beside him and has apparently already endeared himself to the hobbit with his open, easy-going nature, “I will be quite happy to leave that blasted forest behind.” He gives a nod to the south, across the road, where the trees stand dense and sinister.

“I thought you lot liked all those green things like trees,” Bofur replies, and then grins in apparent amusement as he watches Master Baggins reach up for his pony’s saddle and, again, futilely attempt to pull himself up enough to get his foot into the shortened stirrup. Thorin leads his pony over to them in a few quick strides.

“Normally we do— Oh.” Master Baggins has turned his head to address Bofur only to find Thorin standing there too.

“Would you like some help?” Thorin asks, gesturing toward the hobbit’s steed.

Master Baggins purses his lips, looking briefly mulish and like he would very much like to refuse, but then at last he releases a breath and gives a small nod. “Yes, alright.” He turns back around and, just like the previous day, Thorin leans in and places his hands on the hobbit’s soft waist. He cannot resist inhaling as he does so, the scents of pipeweed and campfire smoke mixing with the sweat of a full day already on the road in his One’s golden tresses. He lifts the halfling easily, like he weighs hardly anything at all, and only relinquishes his grip once Master Baggins gets his leg over his pony’s saddle.

He feels rather hot under the collar when he turns away to climb onto his own pony, though Bofur thankfully doesn’t comment beyond a knowing smile.

“You were saying about them trees, Mister Bilbo?” Bofur says as they head out onto the road.

“Oh? What? Hm—” The hobbit coughs a little, clears his throat, and then finally goes on to tell them all about the horrors of what the Shirelings call the Old Forest.

 

* * *

 

They ride into the human town of Bree in the late afternoon and quickly divide up into a few groups to acquire the various supplies they might need.

“We should not linger here,” Gandalf warns quietly, his eyes already on one of the notice boards outside of the inn and tavern, no doubt looking for another orcish missive advertising the bounty on Thorin's head.

“We won’t,” Thorin agrees – if he is being hunted, as Gandalf seemed to think all those months ago when he had first come to Thorin to urge him to take up this quest, then his sister-sons, his One, anyone who accompanies him is in danger as well. Still, Master Baggins’ appearance in their midst the previous day, and his being so ill-equipped for the journey ahead of them, means that they must stop at least for a short while here in this last vestige of civilization before they strike out into the wilds.

The hobbit is standing with Bombur, Bofur, and Balin, saying something about food stuffs, herbs and spices for cooking that they ought to get a store of for the road, when Thorin approaches them.

“Master Baggins,” he says, and their conversation trails off, all four looking to him, the three dwarves with amiable enough smiles on their faces and the halfling with a look that is bordering on a glare. “We should determine what supplies you still require.”

The hobbit’s frown intensifies. “I really don't see that what I've already brought with me is so very insufficient,” he starts to argue.

“What weapons do you carry, then?” Thorin cuts him off, matching him glare for glare. “What armor? Do you have anything about your person that would aid you when – _when_ , not if, Master Baggins – _when_ we face orcs, wargs, a _dragon?!_ Or do you plan to ward them off with a well-seasoned supper?” he finishes with a sneer.

The hobbit has gone rather pale at his words, his mouth pinched into a small, flat line as he stares down at his bare toes in the dirt. Thorin softens slightly, though not enough to entirely regret what he has said. “I would not have any in my Company face such dangers unprepared,” he says, dropping his voice and taking half a step nearer, and thinks but does not say, _You least of all._

“Oh—” Master Baggins swallows thickly and glances around for a moment, as though searching for some way to still be cross with Thorin, but finally, he meets Thorin's gaze. “Oh, alright,” he sighs. “What have you got in mind?”

 

* * *

 

The armorer’s shop is small and dingy, and Thorin feels his hopes crumble away almost immediately as he surveys their sparse wares. What little there is appears mostly second-hand, dirty and rusted, and what little might be considered serviceable is surely too large for the hobbit’s small frame. While Balin trails around the displays of chainmail and boiled leather, Thorin makes for the weaponry along one wall. Master Baggins lingers back by the shop’s entrance, clearly just as skeptical as Thorin is himself, folding his arms about himself and shifting his weight from one large, furred foot to the other.

“Master Baggins,” Thorin calls, drawing the hobbit’s gaze over to him, and, after a jerk of Thorin’s head, he finally comes trotting over, his brows knit together worriedly and a growing frown on his face. “One of these might do,” Thorin says, gesturing to the collection of daggers on the shop’s counter – though the halfling has to stand up on his toes to see.

“Oh, um, I suppose,” Master Baggins says, his small hands grasping the edge of the countertop.

“Here.” Thorin hands the first one down to him, a reasonably well-balanced little dirk – though a moment later he has to rush to catch it as its weight nearly drags it from the hobbit’s hold. “Something smaller,” he mutters, returning the first to its place in the display.

“Indeed,” Master Baggins agrees, his voice a little high and strangled after the near-miss with the blade, “something I’ll not drop and stab my own foot with would be much better, I should think.”

The next few blades are only a marginal improvement, and Thorin continues to hand them over only to take them away again a moment later when the halfling still struggles to hold them before him. Each weapon is smaller than the last and yet still none will suffice, until they are left with only a few tiny knives, each with a blade that is barely the length of Thorin’s palm. “I suppose these will be better than nothing,” Thorin sighs, and waves to the shopkeeper to come give them a price. “Just make sure to stay behind me – or one of the others, if you must – should anything happen,” he says, handing over the coins to pay the human behind the counter.

“Oh— Well, I, er—” The halfling stumbles over his words, finally trailing off as Thorin pushes the little knives into his hands.

“Balin,” Thorin calls, looking across the room towards his councilor. “What have you found?”

“This might do,” Balin says, holding up a shirt of light mail and crossing over to Thorin and Master Baggins. “Try this one, laddie.”

After first stuffing his new little daggers into the pockets of his red jacket, Master Baggins reaches out to attempt to take the shirt from Balin’s outstretched hands. The bottom edge of it drags on the floorboards, and, like the daggers, the halfling seems barely able to lift it, in any case. “It’s not so heavy when the weight’s distributed over your body,” Balin tells him with a small smile.

“Is this— really necessary?” Master Baggins asks, struggling to keep ahold of the chainmail.

“Yes,” Thorin answers. He takes the shirt out of Master Baggins’ hands and holds it up to inspect it himself, trying to ignore how the halfling watches him with wide, round eyes. “Necessary, but insufficient,” he growls, frowning down at the rust-flecked links. “I would not trust such human-craft to not crumble to dust the first time it takes a real blow,” he tells Master Baggins, who blanches at such a thought. “Had we the time,” _and the funds_ , he adds silently, “I would rent out the smithy here in town and make you some proper weapons and armor, but as it is, time is short, and we must continue on our way. Like I said – stay behind me should we meet with any trouble.”

“Right. Of course,” Master Baggins murmurs in response, his eyes, if possible, only widening further as Thorin easily tosses the shirt back to Balin, who catches it and returns it to its place with the others. Then, as Balin steps out into the street and Thorin ushers the halfling outside after him, Master Baggins pipes up, “You— You can do that?” He seems just a touch pale, a little lightheaded when Thorin glances down at him. “Make weapons and things?”

“All dwarves know something of smithing,” Thorin says, frowning slightly – could Master Baggins be growing ill? “But yes, I am a blacksmith by trade.”

The hobbit swallows with some difficulty. “Oh.”

“I crafted this myself,” Thorin goes on then, gesturing to the axe currently strapped across his back as they turn down the road to rejoin the rest of the Company. He knows he's toeing the line into boasting, but the hobbit’s wide, clearly impressed eyes – and the warm feeling in the pit of Thorin’s stomach that they cause – push him onward. He next touches the hilt of Deathless where it rests at his hip. “And this.”

“Oh,” Master Baggins says again, his gaze following the movement of Thorin’s hand, before he finally looks away.

They fall into silence after that, and Thorin finds himself turning over the last hour in his mind. It was, by far, the best interaction he and Master Baggins have yet had, though the pleasure of that knowledge seems to have gone a bit to his head: he feels flushed, almost… almost as if he is in a state of half-arousal, as if he can feel his blood flowing downward.

Thorin allows his gait to slow a little as they near the others, allowing Master Baggins and Balin to go on ahead, and wonders if he ought to make use of the tavern’s privy before things become too… noticeable.

A quick check downward, though, shows that Thorin's body in fact remains unaffected. His heart is pumping steadily as always, not rushing in his ears, though he could almost swear…

The realization hits him all at once, and he stops in his tracks, his gaze snapping up to the rest of the Company up ahead, watching the way their smallest member hangs back, turning away from the others, nervously dancing from foot to foot, the reddening in the tips of his pointed ears visible even from where Thorin stands.

These are not his own sensations Thorin is feeling.

They are Master Baggins’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo is turned on by big strong dwarves who are good with their hands, and no one will ever convince me otherwise.
> 
> [Boost this chapter on tumblr](http://jezunya.tumblr.com/post/172884204454/to-halve-and-to-hold-chapter-4-is-now-up-on-ao3)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In one hand, the smith holds a mighty sword, the blade longer than Bilbo is tall and nearly as wide as the hobbit’s own shoulders. Fingers clenched tight around the weapon’s thick hilt and biceps bulging and glimmering in the low light, the dwarf slams the sword down onto the anvil before him. The metal glows bright orange as he swings the massive hammer in his other hand down to strike at the hot length._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slightly longer wait on this chapter! I've had some recent changes in my home life the past week – all positive, but it meant my attention has been divided away from writing. 
> 
> Thanks, as always, to everyone who has read, left kudos, or commented. Yall make my day :)

The coals burn hot, casting everything in shades of gold and red, including the smith’s skin, which gleams, almost glows, in the smoky light from the forge. His muscles bulge and flex as they move under the sheen of sweat that covers every inch of him, from his gloriously broad shoulders to firm pectorals, and a stomach that is both taut with strength and sheathed in a healthy layer of fat that makes Bilbo’s hands itch to grab and stroke. Dark hair – flecked here and there with silver, the same as that on his head and in his close-cropped beard – follows every dip and contour of his flesh, trailing downward until it disappears beyond the waistband of his trousers.

In one hand, the smith holds a mighty sword, the blade longer than Bilbo is tall and nearly as wide as the hobbit’s own shoulders. Fingers clenched tight around the weapon’s thick hilt and biceps bulging and glimmering in the low light, the dwarf slams the sword down onto the anvil before him. The metal glows bright orange as he swings the massive hammer in his other hand down to strike at the hot length.

It almost feels as if Bilbo is the one who has taken the blow from that hammer, rather than the sword, leaving him terribly lightheaded and weak in the knees as he looks on.

As if noticing for the first time that he has an audience, the smith pauses in his hammering and glances up, his enormous tool held half-raised before him as if it weighs nothing at all. Bilbo is just opening his mouth to urge him onward, when, in the space of a blink, from one moment to the next, as if by magic, several dark, twisting lines of ink trace themselves across Thorin’s skin.

Because the shirtless dwarven smith before him is of course Thorin Oakenshield. _Of course._

Bilbo squints his eyes slightly at this new development, tilting his head and holding the tip of his tongue between his teeth. Tattoos. Interesting. He’s never really considered tattoos before – never actually seen any up close, to be fair, only spied them from a distance on the few dwarven traders who have happened to pass through Hobbiton in the past – but he finds now that they’re actually rather enticing, beautiful even, with their precise, intricate knots and carefully etched runes.

The scars that accompany the tattoos, though, pale and knotted and scattered across the dwarf’s skin in varying sizes – some alarmingly large, and surely painful before they had healed – give him more pause. Tattoos are one thing, but scars are not exactly the stuff of a Shire gentlehobbit’s fantasies…

Thorin follows Bilbo’s gaze down to his bare torso. “This is… highly impractical,” he says, and then looks over at Bilbo again with one dark eyebrow raised. “As is this,” he adds, hefting the huge sword with a frown. “The whole point was to make you something that would fit your physique.”

Bilbo sighs, slumping back in his armchair. Because there is suddenly an armchair in which he can slump. Also, beside him, a little tea table has appeared with a piping hot pot of tea and a lovely little chocolate hazelnut cake for him to munch on. “Trust the stuffy Baggins side of me to choose _now_ to butt in about practicality,” he mutters, and doesn’t have to even cut himself a slice of the cake: it simply appears on a plate in his hands the moment he thinks of it. “And after I’ve gone and done the most Tookish thing of my entire life and run off on an adventure with a bunch of dwarves!”

“I… don’t know what that means,” Thorin says slowly, still watching him from in front of the hot forge, his brows drawn together quizzically when Bilbo looks up again. After a moment, the dwarf glances down at himself once more and at the sword and hammer in his hands, and then, when he meets Bilbo’s gaze again, he asks, a little haltingly, “This would… please you?”

“Yish— Er, yes! Yes, please!” Bilbo answers brightly, first having to swallow past his mouthful of cake, and sits forward in his chair, smiling wide and eager.

Thorin gives him one more look like he rather suspects Bilbo might have been kicked in the head by a pony at some point, but, thankfully, he turns back to his sweaty, grunting, muscle-bulging task without further interruption.

Bilbo sits back with his endless supply of tea and cake and thoroughly enjoys the view.

 

* * *

 

He manages to wake on his own this morning, thankfully, without needing to be shaken awake by any dwarven kings – an especially fortunate turn of events, given the content of the dream that’s still dancing about behind Bilbo's eyelids. He’d not be able to look Thorin in the eye having just come off of _that_ , he’s quite sure, he thinks as he stretches and finally forces himself to sit up, despite how his limbs ache from another long day in the saddle.

A surreptitious glance around reveals the dwarf in question is sitting with his back turned toward Bilbo anyway, busily packing away his things in his usual spot beyond Kíli and Fíli. Good; he's in the clear, and, Bilbo figures, wincing a little as he climbs to his feet, he may as well use this opportunity to go have a wash and change his clothing in peace.

They had camped out in the flatlands east of Bree the previous night, after both Thorin and Gandalf had insisted they couldn’t possibly stay the night in an inn like civilized people. Bilbo winces and stretches again as his back gives a twinge when he bends to pick up his travelling pack. One last night in proper beds would have done them all good, he thinks, grumbling a little under his breath as he shoulders his pack and starts across the camp towards the stream he can hear just on the other side of the next hill.

It occurs to him then, as he happens to glance around just as Thorin looks up, their eyes meeting for the briefest of moments before Bilbo tears his gaze away, that the Company’s sleeping arrangements might have been significantly different in an inn, with walls, and doors that lock, without the prying eyes of the others making privacy impossible… It’s several days and several dozen miles too late, but for the first time Bilbo wonders if he perhaps ought to be at all worried about fending off the nighttime advances of a lusty dwarf, believing himself entitled by their supposed soulbond, bigger and stronger than Bilbo in every way.

That’s quite a terrifying thought to have just as he’s about to go off to bathe, and the sound of footsteps behind him as he leaves the camp, followed quickly by a heavy hand dropping onto his shoulder, has Bilbo all but leaping out of his skin and spinning around to face—

Not Thorin.

No, the dwarf frowning down at him like Bilbo is a skittish little rabbit is the Company’s grizzled old healer, Óin.

“Oh, er—” Bilbo gulps in air, attempting to calm his speeding pulse, and sees the healer’s eyes drop down to his mouth: attempting to read his lips, as his ear trumpet is still tucked into his belt. “Did… Did you need something?” he asks at last.

“Here,” Óin grunts, and thrusts a little earthenware pot in his hands out towards Bilbo.

He takes it gingerly, starting to ask, “What…?”

“It’s for your backside, lad,” Óin explains loudly, gesturing vaguely to Bilbo’s lower half.

Bilbo stares at him, feeling his face pale, hoping against all hope that this isn’t what he thinks it is but horribly, terribly afraid that he is, in fact, holding a little pot of sexual lubricant.

Over Óin’s shoulder, several yards back, he spies another figure standing at the edge of the camp, watching them: Thorin, having risen from where he was seated a minute ago, his dark brows drawn together as his eyes find Bilbo’s once more. Though he makes no move to approach them, the dwarf king holds Bilbo’s gaze and then tips his chin up ever so slightly, his frown seeming to ask, _Is everything alright?_

Face flaming, Bilbo forces his attention back to the grey-haired dwarf before him. “For my…?” he prompts, but can’t bring himself to finish that sentence.

“Thorin said you were complaining about sore muscles the other day,” Óin responds, and, his hands now free of the pot he’d given Bilbo, he pulls out his ear trumpet to better be able to hear Bilbo.

“Oh,” Bilbo says, blinking, and then, finally, the petal drops. “Oh! Yes! Sore muscles, of course. It’s… some kind of poultice?” he asks, and raises the pot towards his face to crack open the top. The strong whiff of medicinal mint hits him right in the face, confirming his suspicion.

Óin nods. “I had to gather the supplies while we were in town yesterday and brew it up last night,” the dwarf explains. “Truth be told, I wasn’t expecting to need such a thing, certainly not so early on in our journey. Dwarves don’t tend to get sore just from riding along while another creature does all the work,” he remarks dryly, and Bilbo glances back up at him with an affronted frown, feeling himself beginning to bristle. He can’t help that he’s not used to so much travel!

Shaking his head, Óin goes on before Bilbo can speak, his tone gentling somewhat. “I’m not familiar with the physiology of hobbits as I am with my own kind,” he admits. “So if you need anything, you let me know, alright, lad? No keeping any hurts to yourself, I don’t care how minor you think they might be,” he says sternly.

“Alright,” Bilbo agrees with a nod, finding himself a little mollified by this offer. Prickly as his new traveling companions often are, they do, on the whole, also seem to have his welfare in mind.

Óin sniffs and glances past Bilbo, toward where the stream burbles away. “You’d best get a move on,” he says next, already beginning to turn back towards the camp. “Most of the others could do with a good wash while we’ve the opportunity, and you’d best be finished before they get there if you don’t want to get pulled into any of their games.”

“Oh— Oh dear— Thank you!” Bilbo just manages to call over his shoulder as he hurries on towards the stream, and Óin laughs and shakes his head and returns to camp.

He resolutely ignores the way he can feel Thorin’s gaze still on him as he crests the hill before finally dropping out of the dwarf’s view.

 

* * *

 

Bilbo manages a very quick wash and, with great relief, is just buttoning up his shirt once more when Fíli and Kíli come barreling over the hill, followed closely by Ori and, more sedately, a few of the other dwarves. The young princes holler at him to come join their swimming games as they begin to strip off and leap into the shallow water. Bilbo makes a weak, nervous excuse, bundling his clothes up into his arms before hurrying off further downstream in just his shirt and drawers. He can’t remember the last time he’s seen so many naked bodies – not since he was a wild young tween, he’s sure.

That they are all, to a one, tattooed in various fashions remarkably similar to what Bilbo had seen in his dream last night does not bear consideration.

 _At least Thorin wasn’t amongst them,_ he thinks with a frown, hunkering down behind a lonely tree growing on the stream’s bank. He’s already had more than enough embarrassment involving that dratted king of theirs for one day, thank you very much.

He rinses out the clothes he’s spent the last two days in and then lays them out to dry on the tree’s gnarled roots, before turning to the little pot Óin had given him. The salve burns a little as he applies it to his back, rear, and legs, but it’s the satisfactory, soothing sort of burn that has his knotted muscles beginning to unwind within a few minutes. It rubs into his skin and dries quickly enough, and he is soon able to don a fresh change of clothes from his pack without even the slightest uncomfortable residue. Óin is a miracle worker, he decides, and packs the still mostly full pot away in his bag for future use.

He returns to camp when he hears the dwarves’ splashes upstream begin to wane, not wanting to be left behind – or, more likely, to be scolded for keeping them waiting. His worn clothing is still rather damp, but Bofur helpfully shows him how to string up a sort of rudimentary clothesline over the packs behind his saddle, allowing his clothing to continue to dry and air out as they ride.

Thorin appears at Bilbo’s side once more when it comes time to mount up. He holds out a hand wordlessly towards Bilbo’s pony and, scowling but as yet unable to devise any other way to get up into the saddle, Bilbo sighs and nods and turns around so that the dwarf king can lift him up. As infuriating as it is to be so reliant on another for such a basic task, it is somehow so much worse that none of the others ever offer to help him, forcing Bilbo to accept Thorin’s aid day after day.

Even more infuriating is how solid, how strong and safe Thorin’s hands feel on Bilbo’s hips, how his warmth seems to bleed right through every layer of Bilbo’s clothing, how his long hair sometimes brushes against Bilbo’s neck and shoulders as the dwarf bends to grasp him round the waist, and how the scent of him – leather, sweat, some sort of pipeweed that is sharper and more spiced than Bilbo’s own – wafts around him, how very much Bilbo wants to gulp that scent down, fill his lungs with nothing but Thorin, lean back and let that warmth fully encircle him—

He’s falling into a habit of studiously avoiding Thorin’s gaze, especially in these moments when they’ve just parted, when Bilbo is settling into his saddle and Thorin is turning away to climb onto his own pony. He doesn’t want to see the confirmation of just how obviously flustered he is reflected in the dwarf’s eyes, and he certainly doesn’t want to see any sort of answering attraction in Thorin’s expression.

No, such things are best left to the realm of dreams, where Bilbo’s guilty fantasies can play out entirely in private, secret and safe from anyone who might have _opinions_ on them.

That thought leads easily back to the images that had entertained him last night, and Bilbo finds himself idly wondering if perhaps Thorin _does_ have any tattoos like the others, if they are at all like what he’d imagined – only to be startled out of his daydreams when the dwarf king himself clears his throat beside Bilbo. They’ve been riding for some time now, the sun climbing higher and higher into the sky and beginning to make Bilbo sweat a little under his clothes, for all that it is not even summer yet. How the dwarves can go about in their many layers of wool and leather and fur is beyond him, he thinks, glancing over at Thorin with his great fluffy surcoat and armor.

Thorin casts him a brief glance as well, opening his mouth as if to speak before seeming to think better of it. There is a touch of pink across his nose and cheekbones, now that Bilbo looks: perhaps the warmth of the day is beginning to affect him after all. “How, ah… How are you feeling today?” Thorin asks at last, his deep voice awkward, almost hesitant.

“Er… Quite well, thank you,” Bilbo answers, feeling his brows rise a little. Small talk! With Thorin Oakenshield of all people! “And you?” he asks after riding in silence for a long moment.

Thorin looks over at him, seeming surprised by the question. “I am well,” he replies stiffly. “Thank you.”

“Right. Good then.” Bilbo turns his attention forward again and fully expects that they will go on in silence for a while before eventually allowing their ponies to drift away from each other.

“Óin found you with the salve he made, I take it?” Thorin asks abruptly then, pulling Bilbo’s gaze back to him.

“He did,” Bilbo nods. “As you saw,” he adds, his tone turning a little wry, remembering the dwarf king standing there at the edge of camp, watching Bilbo and the healer. 

“It seemed as if—” Thorin starts, before breaking off, his brows knitting together in a scowl. “As if he had frightened you,” he finishes, casting Bilbo a dark glance.

“He only surprised me is all,” Bilbo sighs irritably. He didn’t think his embarrassing little startle response had been so obvious that it could be seen from back in camp – but perhaps Thorin actually was watching him more closely than their briefly traded glances had seemed to suggest. Perhaps that was why he had stood and made as if to follow Óin that morning, when he had seemed to be all but ignoring Bilbo before that. 

“You seemed—” Thorin says, but bites the words off. Then, “I thought—” He doesn’t finish either sentence, instead sinking into a rather frustrated silence. His big hands clench around his pony’s reins as he looks forward with a glare, his lips pursing and jaw working as he struggles over what to say next.

“I, um. I suppose I should thank you,” Bilbo says, breaking the silence, and Thorin’s gaze jerks up to meet his, the dwarf blinking in surprise. “For the salve Óin made for me, I mean. He, er, he sort of said it was your idea, or rather, that you had told him that I… um…” He trails off with a vague wave of his hand. Goodness but he feels rather warm under the collar after holding Thorin’s gaze for so long.

“You are welcome,” Thorin murmurs very, very quietly, and when Bilbo peeks over at him, the dwarf is most definitely growing rather pink in the face.

Bilbo looks back down at his hands on the pommel of his saddle, swallowing with some difficulty and feeling his own face flush as well. For all that Thorin Oakenshield has shown himself to be bossy, rude, high-handed – for all that he seems to really believe this nonsense about soulmates – Bilbo can’t help but think that it was a rather kind thing for him to have done, thoughtful even. Especially considering what Óin had said about dwarves not having such problems like sore muscles from riding a pony for days on end…

The thought of _muscles_ , of course, brings the vision of bared, flexing, sweaty, dwarven muscles from his dream flashing once more before Bilbo’s eyes, and he can feel his face reddening further even as he tries to fend off such thoughts.

“Would you like to learn about my craft?” Thorin suddenly blurts beside him.

Bilbo looks over at him, startled, and finds the dwarf in a similar state to himself: wide-eyed and red-faced. “Your… Your craft?” Bilbo asks. He can only hope that some more innocent small talk, on a completely different topic, will help ease their shared embarrassment. Though what Thorin has to be embarrassed about, when his actions were nothing but noble, altruistic, is quite beyond Bilbo.

“Blacksmithing,” Thorin replies.

Bilbo never before truly understood what it meant to feel his face flame, he’s sure. He must be quite the same shade as an over-ripe tomato now, as every drop of blood in his body rushes directly into his cheeks. “What?” he asks stupidly, staring at Thorin.

“I thought—” Thorin falters, almost seems to choke on his words as he holds Bilbo’s gaze. “I thought perhaps— perhaps that you would like to learn—”

“Nope. No no no, definitely not,” Bilbo cuts him off somewhat frantically, shaking his head and wondering distantly if smoke has by chance begun to pour out of his ears. He certainly feels hot enough for such a thing to have happened. “Don’t know what could have possibly given you that idea, I— Oh, you know, I just remembered!” he announces, his voice cracking as it climbs in pitch, but really, there’s only so much one hobbit can be embarrassed about at any one time. “I need to speak to Gandalf about something! Something very important! If you’ll excuse me—” And he nudges his pony into a faster trot, darting up through the Company and leaving the dwarf king behind.

He falls in beside Gandalf up at the front of the line but doesn’t say a word, sure he must be absolutely radiating discomfort and embarrassment after _that_ ridiculous little exchange.

The wizard looks down at him with a shrewd grin behind his long beard. “You’re getting to know your One better, I see,” he remarks.

“Shut up and pretend you’re talking to me,” Bilbo snarls without looking up at the old man, and can’t even bother feeling ashamed of his poor manners given the way the wizard laughs at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter brought to you by Bilbo's Uncomfortable Dreams™. 
> 
> Seriously, though, I didn't originally intend for there to be quite this many dream sequences... There won't be many more such scenes going forward, but given the way the previous chapter ended, I couldn't resist :D
> 
> [Boost this chapter on tumblr](http://jezunya.tumblr.com/post/173320260484/to-halve-and-to-hold-chapter-5-is-now-on-ao3-in)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Master Baggins has been avoiding him, and Thorin has, admittedly, not tried to change that; this was the first time they had actually spoken to each other in nearly a fortnight, and it was only to argue and yell at one another._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're skipping forward in time a little bit here…

Thorin is _seething_ , every breath huffed out from between clenched teeth as he yanks on his vambraces, pulling viciously at the straps to tighten the armor against his forearms. He keeps his back turned to the others as they gather up their gear and chatter amongst themselves, half-hoping to be able to contain and cool his fury before it erupts outward. At the same time, another part of him wants nothing more than to allow himself to explode, to scream his rage and pain and terror to the heavens, to leave none in any doubt of how extremely, reprehensibly _unacceptable_ the last several hours’ events have been.

He can feel the halfling’s nervous tension through their bond, fluttering and delicate, like a butterfly’s wings or the petals of a flower caught in a high wind – so new and strange, even now, to feel another’s emotions coursing through his own body, yet still _there_ , at least, still whole and alive and breathing, after Thorin had feared— Nausea rolls briefly through him, and Thorin shoves that thought away, along with the memory of Master Baggins held aloft in the trolls’ huge grasp, his terrified eyes unerringly finding Thorin’s amidst the crowd of dwarves.

Now, Master Baggins’ eyes flick back to Thorin every few seconds, he knows without having to look,  while Thorin’s nephews, he knows from _experience_ , give him a wide berth, no doubt treading carefully, keeping their heads down, wary of anything that might set him off…

“You all should have seen him!” Kíli’s voice rises suddenly above the general hubbub of voices behind Thorin. “He walked right past those big oafs and cut the ropes holding the ponies in, and then, _then_ he tried to talk them down! ‘Oh, were those _your_ ponies? Terribly sorry! But you wouldn't want to eat _those_ anyway!’” Kíli breaks off his impression of Master Baggins with a laugh, and then adds, “You were amazing, Uncle Bilbo!”

Something snaps inside Thorin at that, and he whips around, a snarl on his lips, even as Master Baggins demurs, “Really, Kíli, I didn’t do much…”

“ _Amazing?!_ ” Thorin demands of his sister-son, and the whole Company stills, falling silent before him. “The only thing _amazing_ about any of this is how unbelievably _thoughtless_ you and your brother were last night!” Thorin yells, jabbing a finger once in the air toward his two nephews, before his hands ball into fists that he cannot keep from trembling. Kíli and Fíli, standing on either side of Thorin’s One, both seem to shrink in on themselves under his gaze.

“I came back to get help,” Fíli offers quietly, sounding a little sullen.

“Because you said we’d need all hands to round up the ponies once they’d been freed!” Thorin replies, and Fíli cringes. “Neither of you spared a _single thought_ for Bilbo’s safety! You sent him in to face three mountain trolls all alone and completely defenseless!”

“That’s… That’s not _precisely_ …” Bilbo starts, but his voice is weak and he trails off when Thorin casts a sharp glance his way.

“I was keeping an eye on him,” Kíli mumbles next, but drops his gaze when Thorin turns his glare on him again. “And… And Gandalf said hobbits are light on their feet, so… so we thought…”

“You thought _what?_ ” Thorin demands. “Because you clearly didn’t think about any of the _myriad_ ways he – or you, or any of our number – could have been _killed!_ ”

“Alright, so it was a bad decision!” Bilbo suddenly snaps, and the sound of his One’s raised voice, along with the burst of anger that comes rushing through their bond at him, momentarily startles Thorin out of his rampage. The hobbit is frowning up at him when Thorin finally really looks at him, and their soulbond crackles with something else now, something Thorin almost can’t believe he’s feeling: his One actually has the gall to be _annoyed_ with him right now! After he nearly— “But it was a _joint_ decision,” the halfling goes on doggedly. “The boys don’t deserve all the blame for it. And I wouldn’t have agreed to it if I didn’t think I could handle it!”

Thorin stares at him. He can’t believe what he’s feeling, much less what he’s _hearing_. “You thought you could _handle_ it?” he croaks.

“Well… Yes,” Bilbo replies, a little uncertainty at last beginning to creep into his voice and into their bond. “I mean, I wasn’t _planning_ to fight them, of course – I was just going to sneak in and cut the ponies free, which, you might recall, means I wasn’t ‘entirely defenseless,’” he adds, giving Thorin a sour look and pulling one of his tiny little knives out of his pocket. “I have these, remember?”

“Yes, and exactly how effective were your little butter knives against _troll-hide?_ ” Thorin asks witheringly.

The halfling gapes at him for a moment, and Thorin feels the precise instant when his annoyance turns to outrage, red hot and boiling, before he squawks out, “You bought these for me!”

“As a last defense, should everything else fail!” Thorin shouts back. “Not so you could go charging in on your own to face certain death!”

“Obviously not _certain_ death, considering I’m still here, you— you— _ukhag!_ ” Bilbo retorts – and then freezes, as they all do, the color draining from his face as he realizes what he’s just said. “Oh— Oh dear,” Bilbo squeaks, and then he turns tail and scurries off into the trees.

“Wait—!” Thorin takes a single step forward, raising a hand as though to stop him, but then the wizard’s staff cuts across his path, halting him in his tracks.

“I _think_ ,” Tharkûn says, matching Thorin’s glare with one of his own, “someone a bit _cooler-headed_ ought to go after him just now.”

Thorin glowers up at the old vagabond, but he can feel how Bilbo’s— How _Master Baggins’_ anger has turned almost entirely to fear now, and that is enough to stop his tongue and make him rethink his actions. For his One to be afraid of him… He shakes his head, takes a deep breath, trying to calm his racing heart, and then looks to the other dwarves.

“On it,” Bofur volunteers without Thorin having to ask, and with a quick, jaunty salute he turns to jog after Bilbo into the trees.

Dwalin heaves a sigh and mutters, “I’ll go make sure he hasn’t wandered off too far,” before following after Bofur.

Thorin nods, beginning to turn away, his anger all but entirely evaporated now, heartsick in a way he hasn’t experienced in many long years, as his One’s fear – not of some outside threat, but of _him_ – continues to echo through his core.

“Uncle,” Fíli’s voice stops him, cutting through the quiet hum of the others as they return to what they were doing before Thorin’s outburst. His nephews both look deeply remorseful when Thorin turns back to face them, and he is reminded once more of just how painfully young they still are, watching them fidget and struggle to hold his gaze. They look just as they had when they were small children and had been caught in some minor indiscretion, as if they feared that a shattered window or sweets eaten without permission were the worst crime a dwarf could ever commit.

They are adults now, though, he reminds himself. And this is more serious than a little broken glass.

“We’re sorry,” Fíli says after a moment, and Kíli nods beside him. “And you were right – we really didn’t think it through, beyond the idea that Bilbo might be able to sneak in undetected and hopefully save us a fight. That clearly didn’t work out,” he adds ruefully.

“No, it didn’t,” Thorin agrees.

“We didn’t mean any harm, though, honest,” Kíli puts in then, his wide brown eyes glancing up at Thorin for just a moment before he goes back to staring down at his boots.

Thorin draws in a long breath and lets it out in a sigh. “Then let this be a lesson,” he says, and they’re both watching him now, silent and attentive. “Harm can come whether you intend it or not, and often when you have not thought to anticipate it. That is what it means to be a leader,” he adds gravely, looking at Fíli, who squares his shoulders under Thorin’s scrutiny, standing just a little taller. “It is our responsibility to see what dangers might lie ahead, and to ensure that those under our protection are prepared to face those dangers as best they can. And we will not always have a wizard to save our hides in the nick of time,” he adds, casting a dark glance over toward the Grey Wanderer, who has moved away to help himself to some of the sparse breakfast Bombur has thrown together.

“Yes, Uncle,” his sister-sons both murmur, and, apologies offered and accepted and a wholly deserved lecture given, they start to turn away to rejoin the others.

“One more thing,” Thorin says, and they pause to look back at him. Raising an eyebrow, he asks simply, “‘ _Ukhag_ ’?”

Fíli has the good sense to at least look a little embarrassed, while Kíli lets out a short snicker, before catching himself. “We just thought… Well…” Fíli struggles, and eventually gives up, shrugging and smiling slightly. “It’s more fun to learn insults first?”

“Bofur and Nori were teaching him _really_ dirty words!” Kíli hisses in a faux-whisper, and Thorin can only sigh, rolling his eyes.

“Of course they were.” Sighing again, Thorin shakes his head and dismisses them. His sister-sons fall in with the rest of the Company once more, all reassessing and repacking their supplies now that they’ll have to move on foot, with their ponies having run off in the face of the trolls’ presence and the ensuing battle.

Thorin turns back to his own belongings, shrugging on his jacket and then picking up Deathless in its scabbard and the belt upon which it hangs. Without any other distractions, Thorin’s focus is inevitably drawn back to his One and the emotions filtering through their bond: the panicked, hummingbird-like fear of several minutes ago seems to have gone now, replaced by a sort of uneasy weariness. Bofur and Dwalin must have found him, meaning Master Baggins can’t have gone very far.

Just far enough to be away from Thorin.

He grimaces, settling his belt in place around his waist. Master Baggins has been avoiding him, and Thorin has, admittedly, not tried to change that; this was the first time they had actually spoken to each other in nearly a fortnight, and it was only to argue and yell at one another. The halfling has hardly looked at him since Thorin’s disastrous attempt at conversation that day after leaving Bree, when he had brought up his work as a smith – when he had _attempted_ to bring up the dream they had shared the night before.

The secret knowledge of what had happened that night, and the private nature of what he had been privy to, sits uneasily across Thorin’s shoulders. It is only right that he tell Master Baggins, after all. It feels as though Thorin has trespassed upon something he was never meant to see, unintentional though it was, like he’d walked in on the halfling bathing or…

 _Or pleasuring himself,_ is the obvious next thought, and Thorin shies away from it, away from the sort of imagery it conjures, feeling heat wash through him nonetheless.

It’s not as if such things are unheard of, much less taboo – the ability to be close with your One, even when hardships demand a temporary separation or prevent privacy, as their current travelling circumstances do, is one of the great benefits of such a connection. And Thorin has known Dwalin and Nori long enough, and heard enough of their insinuations, to know what forms that ‘closeness’ can take in the confines of a shared dream. Still, it seems… soon? That is certainly part of it, in addition to the fact that Master Baggins couldn’t have known he had an audience. Most dwarves are taught to be disciplined in approaching such things, to avoid such sexually charged fantasies with their Ones so early on, at least until they have worked out what sort of relationship best suits each of them.

That Master Baggins _would_ consider such a thing, though… That is another side to it, of course, one that is as flattering as it is discomfitting… But Thorin’s ego is hardly the issue at hand.

No, the real issue is how to even _start_ such a conversation, how to impart to his unwitting, uninformed, _naïve_ One that Thorin had not only been witness to but also an admittedly not-unwilling participant in his little fantasy. That had been Thorin’s downfall before, the thing that had tangled his words and tied his tongue in knots – especially since he could feel every shift and turn in the halfling’s mood, one moment drifting into a sort of hazy, dreamy arousal, and then, the next, when Thorin had attempted to broach the topic, turning suddenly to sharp, sickening embarrassment. Thorin’s own embarrassment had answered in kind, and after only a few moments their combined emotions had seemed almost to behave like a cavern of echoes, ever reflecting and amplifying each other with no end in sight.

This is not at all the sort of thing he had ever expected to have to struggle through upon meeting his One. Realizing, after those first few days, that he was feeling everything Master Baggins felt has not actually made it any easier for Thorin to sort through all of the foreign emotions that come coursing through their bond. Nor has it prepared him for how the halfling’s emotions affect Thorin’s own moods, how easily they seem to rile each other up without even exchanging a word. That has been the case ever since the beginning, of course, though he hadn’t realized until later, hadn’t recognized it for what it was: that first evening in the Shire, Thorin had been keenly aware of his One, of both his reluctance and curiosity when he looked at Thorin, of his fear, almost to the point of fainting, at the mere mention of the dragon… It should have tipped him off as to the nature of their bond gift, should have occurred to him at the time just how odd it was that he was so very attuned to the moods and desires of someone who was, for all practical intents and purposes, a complete stranger. He can only blame it on the shock of having just met his One, which prevented him from thinking entirely clearly, it seems.

And his realization in Bree had seemed to send him right back to that state of shock and hyperawareness: Thorin had felt as though he was on a hair-trigger, jumping at even the slightest shift in Master Baggins’ mood, now that he understood what it was he was sensing. When the hobbit had left their camp that next morning – presumably to wash in the nearby stream, though a treacherous little voice in a back corner of Thorin’s mind had whispered about what _else_ he might have been doing out there, alone and unclothed, considering the things he’d imagined up the previous night… Thorin pushes those thoughts away now, as he had then, refuses to dwell any further on Master Baggins’ private desires, no matter how they might involve Thorin himself – when he had disappeared from Thorin’s view that morning, and then, only moments later, Thorin had felt such a spike of fear from him, he had leapt to his feet, ready to charge in and fight off whatever threat so unwisely dared to accost his One— Only to find the hobbit talking quietly with Óin before scurrying off to the stream like originally planned.

He had to get ahold of himself, he’d decided then. As much as a part of him desires to do nothing else but revel in this new-found connection, to shirk his duties and shut out all the rest of the world in favor of focusing solely on Bilbo Baggins and exploring all that their soulbond has to offer… he cannot. He has a duty to the Company, and to his people, back in the Blue Mountains and scattered all across Arda, to faithfully complete this quest and restore their home to them. And he has a duty to his One, a duty that requires he not succumb to any of the hazy, languid desires that might plague his dreams, and instead see that Master Baggins is fully informed and educated on exactly what it means to be a dwarf’s One, regardless of how the hobbit’s feelings might affect Thorin.

That was all easier planned than forged, of course, he thinks with a sigh, remembering again the way each of their individual emotions had seemed to amplify the other’s, until Thorin could barely think, much less speak, through his embarrassment. And so when Master Baggins had run away from him that day, Thorin could not help the relief he’d felt. He had let the matter lie ever since, allowing this weeks-long silence to grow between them… Just as he is doing again now, letting others comfort and distract his One while Thorin himself remains passive and silent and helpless, he thinks, his mouth twisting in frustration as he shrugs into his surcoat.

“You are not making such a grand figure as Bilbo’s soulmate so far, are you?” Tharkûn’s voice sounds over Thorin’s shoulder, and he turns to find the wizard approaching, bowl of porridge in hand and disapproving frown set firmly on his grizzled old face.

“I don’t see how it is any of _your_ concern,” Thorin growls, glaring up at him.

Gandalf watches him for a moment, seeming unimpressed by Thorin’s bravado. “Bilbo is a dear old friend – the son of a dear old friend, I should say. And you might recall it was _me_ who led you to his home in the first place,” he adds, to which Thorin scoffs and begins to turn away again. “I will not see him mistreated,” the wizard goes on, his voice sharp, “especially not by the person who should have his best interests at heart more than anyone else!”

“I do have his best interests at heart!” Thorin snarls, whipping back around to face Gandalf. “Whereas he nearly got himself killed last night – several times over!”

“He seemed to have the situation well in hand when I returned,” Gandalf sniffs, shrugging. “He had the wits to play for time,” he points out at Thorin’s wordless, outraged sputtering, “unlike any of the rest of your Company – yourself included.”

That gives Thorin a little pause. He’d been too frightened and angry at the time, more concerned with struggling against his makeshift bonds to try to ascertain if Bilbo was alright, if the trolls had hurt him when they’d grabbed him and used him as leverage to make Thorin and the others stand down. Seeing his One climb to his feet after they’d all been captured and draw the trolls’ attention back to him once more – intentionally! – had nearly sent Thorin into a panic all over again.

And to think, Master Baggins had managed that with not only his own fear coursing through his veins, but Thorin’s as well…

“They must have come down from the Ettenmoors,” Gandalf murmurs to himself, having moved on to inspect their would-be executioners while Thorin stewed in his thoughts and memories of the previous night. “I've not seen mountain trolls like these this far south in an age…”

“They could not have moved in daylight,” Thorin comments, trailing after the wizard and looking up at the hulking, troll-shaped boulders. He has half a mind to take up a hammer and smash off their faces and hands, just to be sure. Gandalf looks back at him, and, realizing what his own words must imply, Thorin concludes, “There must be a cave nearby!”

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t take long to locate the cave with thirteen dwarves all searching for it, their stone sense feeling out precisely where soil turns to rock and where the earth opens to welcome them down into its confines. It is nothing so comfortable or safe as a dwarven stronghold, of course, little more than a dirty pockmark carved into the stone, and what little treasure lies within is liberally mixed with bones and various kinds of unspeakable troll filth.

While some of the others pick through the coins and gems for anything worth taking or stowing away for later, Thorin circles the low-ceilinged room, allowing his gaze, rather than his fingers, to seek out anything of interest. He nearly passes over it at first, but a second glance reveals, covered in cobwebs and dust but unmistakable now that he’s really looking, what can only be a dragon’s tooth.

The sight of a dragon’s maw coming directly at him as Smaug burst through Erebor’s front gates is not one to be easily forgotten, after all.

The tooth is partially encased in metal that gleams murkily beneath its web coating, etched with runes that he cannot quite make out beneath the layer of filth, and attached to a long blade – surprisingly long, nearly as tall as Thorin is himself, he finds as he pulls it free. Even more surprising is how very light it is, especially given its size. “This was not made by any troll,” he murmurs, turning the sheathed blade in his hands before reaching for the hilt.

“Nor by any smith amongst men,” Gandalf says, coming up alongside Thorin with a similarly runed sword in his own hands. “If I had to guess, I’d say these were made by the High Elves in Gondolin, in the First Age.”

Just as he was about to pull the blade free, Thorin instead grimaces, releasing his grip around the hilt. Of course they’re elvish blades – that’s why they’re so light, no doubt crafted from the treasure of Khazad-dûm, so jealously hoarded by elves of ages past, bought at a dear price from the dwarves who mined it, though not so dear as what Thorin’s ancestors had paid for it in turn…

“You could not wish for a finer blade!” Gandalf snaps, apparently seeing Thorin’s sneer and no doubt following where his thoughts have traveled – and the wizard’s ire no doubt rising defensively in response to his precious elves’ guilt.

With a brief glare up at the old man, Thorin grasps the dragon tooth once more and yanks the blade from its sheath, fully expecting to find little more than rust – only to be met with smooth, shining, perfectly sharp metal instead.

His first instinct was right after all – and Mahal’s Gift does not rust.

The others soon finish their inventory of the trolls’ hoard, with Glóin marking the spot on his map with apparent great satisfaction. That they all seem to believe without reservation that they will be returning this way, or at least that they’ll be alive and well at the end of this quest and able to direct family and friends to this spot as they journey out to the restored Mountain to join them… That thought alone, of their scattered kin streaming back to their lost homeland, of Erebor’s halls ringing with light and life once more, nearly proves too much for Thorin. He turns away, attempting to quietly clear his throat of the lump that has sprung up there and blink away the tears of longing that threaten to overtake him. 

“Let’s get out of this foul place,” he orders, turning back to face them, his loyal, optimistic followers, gesturing broadly with the elvish sword towards the cave opening. Those who had come down into the cave rather than keeping watch outside – Glóin, Nori, Ori, Fíli, Bofur, Bifur, Dwalin – stream past him up and out into the fresh air, though he does get several curious looks from them, including one intensely raised eyebrow from Dwalin at the sight of the foreign weapon in his hand. Thorin only shakes his head and makes to follow them out.

“Thorin,” the wizard’s voice calls, stopping him just before he reaches the mouth of the cave. Gandalf is looking down at something in the mud and filth on the cavern’s floor when Thorin turns back to face him, nudging the muck aside with the toe of his boot, and after a moment he looks up at Thorin with a smile. “I believe I may have found something that would do quite nicely for our hobbit.”

 

* * *

 

“Master Baggins,” Thorin calls, striding through the loose cluster of the Company members who elected to wait outside rather than venturing down into the troll cave. The halfling was among that group, purportedly because he hadn’t any boots like the dwarves and so could not stomach the idea of treading through whatever detritus might litter the trolls’ lair. Thorin cannot help wondering, though, if he would have been so eager to stay behind had Thorin also chosen to do so rather than leading the group in the cave, if the idea of dirtying his bare feet might not have seemed so terrible compared to having to spend even a moment in his One’s company…  

The halfling meets Thorin’s gaze reluctantly, tucked away at the far end of their gathering with Dori and Balin, though the two older dwarves begin to subtly inch away as Thorin approaches. Master Baggins looks wan and sullen, and through their bond filters first a sort of wary antagonism, and, beneath it, that accursed apprehension, _fear_ , fear of _Thorin_.

“I apologize for insulting you,” Master Baggins suddenly blurts out as Thorin draws to a stop in front of him.

Thorin pauses, blinking down at him, blindsided by the non-sequitur. “It’s… alright,” he murmurs, and then frowns a little. “Did they tell you what that word means? It wasn’t anything particularly offensive, just… a bit childish,” he explains, shrugging.

Master Baggins stares up at him, his brows slowly knitting together as that blasted annoyance seeps once more into their bond. “Is that a trick question?” he demands at last.

“What?” Thorin frowns down at him in confusion.

“I know— I’ve _heard_ , as much as anyone has, that the dwarven tongue is supposed to be _secret!_ ” Master Baggins goes on then, his words rushing out quick and sharp. “If I say I _do_ know what it was I said before, well then I suppose I’ve done something terribly wrong, haven’t I? And so has whoever taught me it! But I can’t exactly _deny_ it, either, considering I’ve already _used_ the word, so—”

“Peace, halfling,” Thorin cuts in, squeezing his eyes shut and holding up a hand against the torrent of words. “You are not in any trouble – you or the ones who taught you.”

“I—” Master Baggins takes a sort of quick, hiccupping breath, seeming almost to trip over himself. “I’m not?”  

“No,” Thorin sighs, meeting the hobbit’s wide, wondering gaze once more. He looks down at his hands and then holds out the smaller of the two blades towards Master Baggins. “Take this.”

“Oh— What—?” He gingerly accepts the little elven dirk – really more of a short sword in the hobbit’s hands – but holds it out in front of him as if afraid of dropping it on his toes like he had nearly done with the human-made ones in Bree. “Oh,” Master Baggins says again after a moment, looking down at the little sword. “Oh, it’s so light!” He pulls it partway from its sheath, revealing gleaming edges much like Thorin’s own newly acquired sword.

“It is most likely some silversteel alloy,” Thorin comments, moving a little closer to peer down at the blade. He had managed to wipe the worst of the muck from the hilt and sheath on his way out of the cave, but it will still need a thorough cleaning. The blade, however, perfectly reflects the halfling’s wide hazel eyes blinking down at it, not a nick or speck of rust in sight.  

“Silver and steel?” Master Baggins asks, looking up at Thorin again with a frown, his brows raised questioningly. “I’ve never thought of either of those as terribly light.”

Thorin shakes his head. “No, _silversteel_. What the elves call ‘mithril.’” That brings a slight dawning of comprehension to the halfling’s face, and Thorin purses his lips, hesitating just a moment, and then adds, quieter, “In our language, it is called ‘sanzigil.’”

Master Baggins’ eyes jerk up from their inspection of his new sword, his shock and confusion washing through their soulbond as he gapes up at Thorin. Thorin holds his gaze, attempting to exude as much calm, safety, security, as possible – if he can feel every shift in his One’s emotions, then the reverse must also be true, and Thorin would rather have all the hair shorn from his head than ever again cause Bilbo Baggins to fear him.

Master Baggins drops his gaze after a long moment, looking down at the little sword in his hands. “Sanzigil,” he repeats quietly to himself, and then, looking up again, with an edge to his voice and something almost like suspicion in his eyes, like he doesn’t _want_ to believe Thorin’s assurances, he asks, “Why are you telling me this?”

Thorin licks his lips, letting his eyes trail down to the elven sword in his own hands and idly rubbing away a bit of mud on the scabbard. “You are right in thinking our language is secret,” he says after a moment. “From _outsiders_. But a dwarf’s One is considered as one of Mahal’s children, regardless of their race, and so you have as much right to every part of our culture as any dwarf here.”

Master Baggins sucks in a quick breath through his teeth, and Thorin can sense his irritation once more. “Right,” he mutters, looking away with a frown, “of course it comes back to _that._ ”

Thorin swallows with some difficulty, his mouth gone dry and throat feeling oddly tight as he too drops his gaze. It is rather obvious how very much Master Baggins wishes to be away from here and to never have to hear another word about soulbonds and Ones… He pushes past all that, though, and past the peevish obstinance now radiating from the hobbit before him, turning his attention back to the purpose that had originally brought him over here. “I can teach you how to fight,” he says, his voice coming out low and gravelly, and he gestures to the little sword when Master Baggins finally looks up at him again. “If you’re going to insist on flinging yourself into harm’s way, you need to at least gain a modest proficiency with a blade.”

“I didn’t _‘fling’_ myself anywhere,” Master Baggins huffs, but he does color a little when Thorin pins him with a raised eyebrow, and at last sighs. “Fine.”

Thorin nods. “We can continue your Khuzdul lessons in the meantime as well,” he says, and, without really thinking, reaches out to slightly adjust the halfling’s grip on his sword, as he would with any young novice under his tutelage.

It is the first time they have actually touched, skin to skin, and the contact sends a bolt of warmth up Thorin’s fingers and through his arm, into his core. They both stand there, silent and unmoving, for several long moments, while Thorin fights the urge to step closer, to wrap his arms around Bilbo and bury his face in his hair, to run his hands over every inch of him and never, ever let go… But the urge passes after a few seconds, and Thorin finds his breath is a little labored when he forces himself to drop Master Baggins’ hand.

“We—” Thorin croaks, clears his throat, and tries again, taking a small step backward. Best to simply act like nothing has happened, he decides. “We’ll focus on basic vocabulary and grammar to start with,” he says. “Something a bit more useful than curses and insults.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Master Baggins says, his voice a touch higher than usual and his face looking rather pink as he clutches his little elven sword in front of him and absolutely refuses to meet Thorin’s gaze, “I’ve found them quite useful so far!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Khuzdul Terms  
> Sanzigil – mithril  
> Ukhag – stinker, person who stinks
> 
> I tossed around a couple of different ideas for insults, things like bastard or beardless or something, but ended up deciding I didn't want anything that could potentially hit a nerve with Thorin and cause him to *actually* be offended, since the point of this line was really just 'holy shit the hobbit just spoke khuzdul!' Also 'stinker' reminds me of Samwise Gamgee ❤
> 
>  
> 
> [Boost this chapter on tumblr](http://jezunya.tumblr.com/post/173802321374/to-halve-and-to-hold-chapter-6-now-on-ao3)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I did not give you that map and key for you to hold on to the past!” Gandalf’s voice suddenly barks, rising clear and sharp through the camp._
> 
> _“I did not know they were yours to keep!” Thorin snarls back._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay on this chapter! There has been... a lot going on... but in exchange, this one is also about twice as long as most previous ones! 
> 
> This chapter comes with warnings for panic attacks/ptsd flashbacks, which I'll be adding to the tags as well.

Bilbo sinks to the ground with a small sigh after yet another long day walking ever eastward. They’ve not made such good time since they lost their ponies, and Thorin has set a punishing pace, as if trying to make up the difference through sheer force of will.

Unlike the others, who mostly flop down around Bilbo to rest a bit before laying out their bedrolls, Thorin only drops his pack in his usual place and then moves a short way off, unsheathing his new elven sword as he goes. This has become their routine the last few days since they’d found the troll hoard: They walk as far as they can before the sun begins to set behind them in the west, then, as most of the Company make camp, Thorin begins warming up, running through fast-paced exercises with his new sword, blue coat flaring out around him as he spins and slashes and jabs at the air.

Any minute now, he’ll cease his own practice and call Bilbo over to come begin his sword-fighting lesson for the day. Bilbo hunkers down a little further in the grass, stretching his legs out, and his feet, all the way down through his toes, groaning a little at the pleasant burn and hoping to gain just a few more moments of rest before he must be on his feet once more.

And that, of course, is when he spies Gandalf making his way around the camp towards where Thorin is practicing.

 _Oh dear,_ he thinks, sinking lower still as he leans back on his elbows, almost wishing to disappear entirely amongst the grasses rather than sit through the fight he knows is coming now. He catches Balin’s eye for a moment, and the older dwarf follows his gaze over toward the two at the edge of camp, looking just as worried as Bilbo feels. There has been a palpable tension growing between the dwarf king and the wizard the last few days, with Gandalf making exasperated comments about taking some kind of “very short detour” and Thorin answering back every time that he will do absolutely nothing of the sort. Bilbo hasn’t caught more details than that, as he’s taken pains to fall back in amongst the others and make himself scarce whenever the two of them come anywhere near each other.

Now, he can vaguely make out of the sound of Thorin and Gandalf talking, and another peek over towards them shows that Thorin has stopped his vicious attacks on the air to instead glower up at the old man, his elven sword held before him with its point driven into the ground like a walking stick. Bilbo looks away again, relieved to see them simply _talking_ , and settles into his patch of grass a bit more comfortably. Perhaps they’ve finally both begun to act like reasonable adults and worked out whatever this disagreement between them is—

“I did not give you that map and key for you to hold on to the past!” Gandalf’s voice suddenly barks, rising clear and sharp through the camp.

“I did not know they were yours to keep!” Thorin snarls back.

“You are a stubborn fool, Thorin Oakenshield!” is Gandalf’s parting remark, before the wizard comes stomping back through the camp.

“Everything alright?” Bilbo asks, straightening in his seat to peer up at the old man as he draws near, and then, when the wizard shows no sign of stopping, he calls, “Gandalf? Where are you going?”

“To seek the company of the only one around here who’s got any sense,” Gandalf growls back at him, marching right past Bilbo and beyond their little circle.

“And who’s that?!” Bilbo demands, with a half a mind to jump to his feet and follow the wizard wherever he’s going. Considering what happened the last time Gandalf wandered off and left the rest of the Company on their own…

“Myself, Mister Baggins!” Gandalf replies. “I’ve had enough of dwarves for one day!”

Bilbo can only gape after him, frozen in place on the ground as the wizard’s grey robes disappear between the trees. He’s not sure which is worse now: that Gandalf has left them once again to fend for themselves, or that he seems to be lumping Bilbo in with the dwarves!

That, of course, only brings to mind what Thorin had told him that day outside the troll cave: that as far as they’re all concerned, Bilbo may as well _be_ a dwarf. Under other circumstances, he imagines, he might even be able to consider that a good thing, a compliment really, a sign that he’s been accepted by his traveling companions and, like something out of a fairy story, gained the favor of their king.

If only it didn’t all actually hinge on their ridiculous belief that he and Thorin are somehow soulmates.

As though summoned by Bilbo’s thoughts, Thorin calls across the camp to him at just that moment. “Master Baggins, we should begin your training.”

“Right. Coming,” Bilbo answers, standing with a sigh and pausing only briefly to dust himself off. His little sword is still belted at his side, and he goes trotting across the breadth of the camp to where Thorin stands waiting, casting one last glance back towards the trees where Gandalf had gone.

“Shamukh,” Thorin says gruffly when Bilbo draws to a stop in front of him, his voice low and expression still stormy. He doesn’t quite meet Bilbo’s eye, his lips pressing into a thin, flat line as he seems almost to chew over some unspoken words, as if silently continuing his argument with the wizard.

“Shamukh,” Bilbo returns the greeting quietly, and the dwarf’s gaze finally focuses on him.

Thorin looks at him for a silent beat, and then he draws in a deep breath, seeming to shake himself a little to cast away his dark mood. “Good,” he comments then, giving a slight nod. “You’ve been working on your pronunciation.”

“Yes,” Bilbo says, glowing a little with pride at the praise despite himself. He has always had such a passion for languages – begun, no doubt, with his mother’s tales of adventure and meeting elves when he was small, leading to his lifelong study of the elven tongues – but it’s a rare thing for Bilbo to have anyone with whom he can practice, much less an actual instructor.

Just so long as he doesn’t dwell too much on _why_ he’s being allowed these lessons, he can keep enjoying the experience.

“We will continue with thafanu marakh zê’,” Thorin says, and there now seems to actually be a very small smile lingering around the corners of his mouth as he moves to stand at Bilbo’s side, raising his sword in front of him. Bilbo draws his own blade, mirroring Thorin’s stance: one foot forward, his little sword held upright in front of him in his left hand – they’ve worked, the last few days, on breaking Bilbo’s instinct to grasp the hilt in both hands and simply swing it wildly about.

“Rumush?” Thorin asks, glancing over at Bilbo, who has become quite familiar with these terms that start out each of their lessons. He gives a nod, and Thorin barks, “Ignin!”

They move slowly through the defensive stances Bilbo has been learning over the last few days, blocking different parts of his body with his blade one after another in sequence. Thorin recites the name of each position as they go, waiting for Bilbo to strike the appropriate pose and repeat the Khuzdul word before moving on to the next and only occasionally pausing to correct his form or, even less frequently, his pronunciation. Bilbo’s memory of both the movements and the new vocabulary is improving with practice, but he still finds himself glancing over towards Thorin every few seconds in the dying light – just to check he’s doing it right, of course. Absolutely no other reason he’d want to look over at the dwarf king while he’s all gilded and glowing with the rays of the setting sun at their backs, none at all.

He allows himself a glance over now, only to find Thorin already watching him, his normally intense blue eyes softened somehow, sending Bilbo’s stomach into a series of funny little somersaults. Bilbo tears his gaze away, looking anywhere but at Thorin – which leaves his eyes, and his thoughts, with nowhere to go but back to the treeline where Gandalf had stalked off. He chews on his lower lip, feeling the same anxious energy of a few minutes ago begin to spiral through him again, willing the pointy grey hat to reappear through the branches.

“You needn’t worry so much over the wizard,” Thorin says then, quietly, and Bilbo looks back at him, only just remembering to move his sword arm into the next position and taking the required step backward as he does. The king stands in a perfect mirror image to Bilbo, sword held in his right hand while Bilbo’s is in his left, and he looks down at Bilbo with those terribly blue, terribly gentle eyes, absolutely radiating a sense of warmth, and safety, and security. Not for the first time, Bilbo feels as if he’s being drawn to the dwarf like a moth to a flame.

“I’m not _worried_ ,” he snaps, turning his face forward again and launching into the second repetition of the defensive sequence without waiting for Thorin to lead the way this time.

He can’t say precisely what gives him this impression, but, without even looking over at Thorin, Bilbo feels as if that aura of safety and security begins to dim and recede a little, almost as if Thorin himself is pulling away from Bilbo, though neither of them have moved from their respective spots in the grass. Part of him exults at this, congratulating himself for having once again overcome his ridiculous attraction to the dwarf king – while another part immediately misses those sensations, and regrets his words and actions that caused their loss.

...Which is _preposterous_ , of course! Why, there’s nothing to say what Bilbo had felt— what he’d _seemed_ to feel coming from Thorin was even real! Bilbo attributing his own random impressions and feelings to Thorin doesn’t make them real, and it certainly doesn’t mean Thorin actually feels anything like what Bilbo imagines!

“I’m only a little… _concerned_ ,” he goes on after a moment, glancing very briefly up at Thorin but making sure not to let himself become ensnared once more. “We got into a spot of trouble the last time he went off without us, after all. I should hate to have a repeat of all that nasty business.”

“Don’t let yourself get talked into any more of my sister-sons’ schemes and we won’t,” Thorin returns smartly, his tone mild despite the reproach in his words.

“Hmph. Well,” Bilbo says, following Thorin’s example and shifting into the next position. “They can be very persuasive.”

“Yes, they can be,” Thorin sighs, his deep voice turning rueful, “as I know all too well.”

That surprises a laugh out of Bilbo. He’s never heard Thorin sound so put upon, so world-weary, not even in the brief moments when he’s spoken about dwarven history and their life as vagabonds. “Ha, there must be a story – or several – behind a statement like that!” he says, glancing over with a grin. But then he meets Thorin’s gaze, and the dwarf is smiling now as well, and Bilbo’s stomach is doing those little jumps and flips again, warmth blossoming in his chest, bubbling with something almost like anxiety, almost like hope—

He forces himself to look away, clearing his throat loudly. In other circumstances, finding himself chatting amiably – even flirtatiously – with a handsome, strong, dwarven warrior king would be… Well, mostly it would be unbelievable, more likely something he’d dreamed up on a warm summer evening after one too many glasses of wine than anything to be found in real life in the Shire. But this isn’t the Shire. And it is, in fact, his real life now, and knowing what Thorin and his followers believe about the two of them, seeing that belief shining in Thorin’s eyes whenever they look at each other, almost like he feels just as giddy as Bilbo does…

“So what were you and Gandalf arguing about?” Bilbo asks then, forcing his tone back to nothing more than cool cordiality as he changes the subject. He feels Thorin drop his gaze as well, sensing, again, how the dwarf seems to pull away from him without actually moving a muscle.

“It was nothing,” Thorin says after a moment of silence. Bilbo casts him another look, raising one eyebrow, and the dwarf sighs again, giving in. “Gandalf has expressed some… _opinions_ on what course our journey should follow over the next few days. I disagreed.”

“Hm. That’s putting it mildly,” Bilbo comments as he slides into the next position in their practice, thinking of the shouting that had preceded the wizard’s storming out of camp. “Is that what he meant about the map?” he asks next, and feels Thorin’s gaze come to rest on him again. Bilbo allows himself only the briefest of glances over, before continuing, “I wouldn’t have thought there was anything special about the map Glóin’s been carrying all this time to chart our course. Why, Balin and I have both looked it over a time or two, and it seemed like any old drawing of the Great Road. There wasn’t anything about it that I could see to indicate it was a gift from a wizard.”

“No, it’s—” Thorin starts to say, but then stops. Bilbo’s gaze jerks back over to look at him as something abrupt and secretive seems to shift in the air between them. He watches as the dwarf’s expression shutters, sending a chill through Bilbo, despite the warm summer evening. “There is another map,” Thorin finally explains gruffly, without looking at Bilbo, “but it’s nothing you need to concern yourself with.”

Bilbo’s mouth falls open as he simply stares at Thorin’s profile for a long moment. Several responses flit through his mind, but then, lowering his sword arm along with his gaze, he straightens his stance and says instead, “Well, I think I’ve had enough practice for one evening. Good night!” Resheathing his sword, he turns on his heel and marches back into camp without sparing another glance back at the dwarf king – even though he can feel Thorin’s gaze on his back as he goes, and can almost imagine a sort of confused, even apologetic tone to his silence.

Oh, blast and confusticate his ridiculous imaginings!

He finds a seat around the fire away from any of the others already hanging about there and offers a slightly clipped “Thank you” to Bombur when the cook passes him a bowl of the stew he’s only just finished preparing. Bilbo hunkers down on his log, avoiding the gazes of all his companions as he stabs rather viciously at the chunks of potato and rabbit meat floating in the thin broth, before biting hard enough to make his teeth scrape along the soft metal of his spoon when he raises it to his mouth.

The nerve of some people!

Bilbo knows, on some level, that he’s being just a tad dramatic. What does he care if Thorin Oakenshield wants to keep secrets? Why, he may not even be specifically keeping it from _Bilbo_. There’s nothing to say he’s shared this fact of there being a second, secret, magical map with any of the others. It could just as easily be that Thorin is keeping this information from _everyone_ , perhaps on orders from Gandalf, the crafty old coot…

As if Thorin would take orders from anyone, least of all the wizard.

No, he thinks sourly, taking another, somewhat calmer bite of his dinner, it’s much more likely that Thorin _is_ keeping this from Bilbo alone. Which makes him feel… all sorts of nasty things, if he’s honest. Like he thinks Bilbo can’t be trusted, for one. And like he’s an outsider, for another, even after the weeks he’s spent on the road with all of them, like he’s a stranger with no stake in where their quest takes them or how they get there, like a wall has been thrown up between him and all the dwarves, like he has no right to expect to be included in any of their decisions.

Like that first evening in Bag End, like he’s back in his own parlor once more and Thorin is insisting that Bilbo _must_ stay behind, that they couldn’t possibly accommodate such a weak, useless, _deadweight_ of a gentlehobbit like him.

He sniffles once, finds himself blinking back the beginning of tears, and sets aside his bowl to fumble for his handkerchief – the handkerchief Thorin had given him – while muttering about his allergies, just in case anyone should notice his shining eyes.

That’s the crux of the issue, really, the reason he’s so frustrated now and the thing that had stopped the words in his throat a few minutes ago when he ought to have given Thorin a good tongue-lashing like his mother taught him: he’s _not_ a dwarf, not really. He had had the thought, as he’d stood there gaping at Thorin, that they had all said he was as good as one of them, had said he has a _right_ to all that the dwarves know. For one brief flash of a moment, he had felt the pure conviction that he ought to assert that right, and remind Thorin of this fact, remind the dwarf king of his _own_ words just a few days ago – but then he’d remembered whence this supposed ‘right’ came. He’s only being allowed on this journey, and allowed to learn all he has from them thus far, because they all believe the ridiculous notion that he and Thorin somehow share a soulbond.

Accepting free language lessons is one thing – he could never say no to such an offer, no matter the consequences, or the implications – but this, seeming to accept these ridiculous claims about Ones and soulbonds, holding Thorin to those claims as if they could ever possibly be true, no, that would just be a bridge too far.

And so all he could do was simply bite his tongue and walk away. And now, all he can do is sit here stewing in impotent rage, casting occasional dark glances over toward where Thorin has resumed his own practice beyond the camp, his movements quick and fluid and oddly beautiful as he spins and slashes at the air with his long elven sword. It’s somehow only _more_ infuriating that someone so pigheaded can also be so terribly attractive, he thinks, and then goes back to stabbing at the dregs of his supper with a small snarl.

“Alright there, lad?” Balin asks as he sinks down onto the log beside Bilbo, a full bowl in his hands and a small, tired smile on his face when Bilbo glances up at him.

“Yes— No— Oh, bother, I don’t know,” Bilbo sighs, shaking his head. He sets his now empty bowl aside in favor of resting his elbows on his knees and digging his fingers into his temples.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Balin says kindly in between bites of stew. “We all learned Khuzdul from the cradle, and picked up our weapons and crafts near soon as we could walk. You’ve got quite a lot to learn, but it’ll come to you soon enough.”

Bilbo snorts and rubs his fingers over his eyes. If only that were all that was plaguing him… He drops his hands at last, and, as he raises his eyes once more, he finds his gaze drawn inexorably past the fire, across the camp, and out to where Thorin is still running through fast-paced practice drills on his own in the gathering twilight. He watches the king silently for several long moments, and then asks, “Is he always like this?”

“Hm? Who’s that now?” Balin asks casually – as if he doesn’t know, as if Bilbo can’t see that little smile of his, or the twinkle in his eye, as if he’s forgotten that _‘Welcome to the family’_ nonsense the first night they’d all met. The older dwarf glances at Bilbo and then seems to follow his gaze, at last nodding and letting out a quiet, “Ah. Yes. Yes, I’m afraid he is.”

Bilbo looks over at Balin as the dwarf turns back to his supper. He’s still smiling behind his beard, and Bilbo braces himself for what he knows, by now, must be coming. For all that Bilbo has come to think of Balin as a friend over the past several weeks, he’s still keenly aware of where the old scholar’s loyalty truly lies. Balin is a pleasant conversationalist, friendly, cultured, and intelligent, and Bilbo has happily wiled away many a mile on this journey talking with him and some of the others who share their interests – Dori and Ori, primarily, though Bofur and Bombur, while a bit rougher around the edges, also share Bilbo’s love of good food and good jokes. But when it comes to Thorin, Balin suddenly seems to resemble no one so much as Bilbo’s various meddling aunts and uncles and older cousins, the types who go about gossiping over which tween or young adult is smitten with whom, and either clucking their tongues over Bilbo’s persistent bachelorhood or sharing knowing glances whenever one of his peers seemed to show him a little more attention than usual at a Farthing dance.

He’d thought he’d long since left such bothers behind, a good decade too old now to really be considered much of an eligible catch, his smial and landholdings notwithstanding. And yet here these dwarves are, tumbling into his life and acting like he’s some dunderheaded youngling again who simply hasn’t realized yet that he’s in love.

“Thorin’s always been a hardworker,” Balin goes on, sighing and shaking his head just a little, as if he finds such a trait exasperating and hasn’t instead just paid the king a compliment. “He led our people after Erebor fell, when no one else could, and went to work as a smith in the towns of men to put bread in our mouths, even when his skill was disrespected and his work undervalued… Even when all others would have long since buckled under such ill-use.” He pauses, sighing again. “He could not do otherwise, if you asked him, though; it’s in his blood to protect all those under his rule. I’m afraid, laddie,” he says, glancing over at Bilbo again, “he’s simply never learned when to stop working.”

“I— Well. Hm.” Bilbo really doesn’t know what to say to any of that. _‘I meant, is he always so controlling and secretive?’_ seems a rather poor complaint now – _‘Is he always so focused on the task before him and trying to do everything he can to reclaim a homeland for his people, even if he hurts a few hobbitish feelings along the way?’_ Yes, well done, Baggins, making their entire race’s existential crisis all about yourself.

He doesn’t particularly like the fact that Balin has no doubt anticipated his line of thinking and has managed to, as usual, reframe it to put Thorin back into a— well, if not an entirely positive or friendly light, then at least an understandable one. Bilbo can hardly argue that his own bruised ego ought to come before the lives and homes of all the dwarves around him, to say nothing of all the thousands more depending on them and this venture. Still, it grates on his nerves; he can practically hear the twitter of scheming relations gossiping about wedding plans every time he and Balin have this sort of exchange.

Bilbo sighs, shaking his head, and gathers up his bowl and spoon for washing. “Well, perhaps someone should teach him to ease up once in a while,” is his parting remark as he stands once more. He knows it’s a weak, low blow, but he’s also not entirely willing to admit defeat: this is just a temporary retreat, rather than fully relinquishing his anger.

He can hear the smile in Balin’s voice as the dwarf murmurs behind him, “Yes, perhaps _someone_ should.”

 

* * *

 

Gandalf still has not returned when Bilbo rises with the rest of the Company a little past dawn the next morning. They break camp in relative quiet, the dwarves grumbling sleepily to each other as they all gather up their bags and belongings for another long day of walking. Bilbo can’t seem to keep his gaze off of the treeline for more than a second or two even as he rolls his blankets up and secures them to his pack, his eyes darting from tree to tree in search of a pointy hat and familiar grey robes, but to no avail. With one final, aggrieved sigh, he closes his pack up and stands to swing it around onto his back – only to hear a quiet grunt as the bag impacts one of the dwarves as they were apparently crossing the camp just a pace behind him.

“Oh—! Oh, goodness, my apologies—” he starts automatically, spinning around to face his victim.

And it’s Thorin, of course.

“Think nothing of it,” the king says, his voice low, rubbing one hand down his opposite arm for a moment. His eyes briefly flick to Bilbo’s face and then beyond him, to the trees, understanding dawning. “You seem a bit preoccupied this morning, Master Baggins,” he comments, meeting Bilbo’s gaze again.

Bilbo feels himself begin to color slightly, the same annoyance from the previous evening rising easily in him. “I’m merely anxious to be on our way once more,” he sniffs, fingering the straps of his pack where they slice down across his shoulders.

Thorin gives a small nod and for a moment looks as if he might leave it at that and move along, but then he seems to change his mind, shifting his weight ever so slightly to face Bilbo more fully. “You know the wizard can look after himself, of course,” he says, and then pauses, licking his lips. “And I… I _hope_ you know that I— that _we_ would never allow you to come to harm,” he continues, then adds, his mouth twisting ruefully, “even if we were to have the ill luck of meeting with the likes of mountain trolls twice in the space of one week.”

“Oh…” Bilbo can only blink up at him; arrogant as he is, controlling as he, every now and then Thorin will say or do something so terribly sincere, like this, and it takes Bilbo a few seconds to remember why he objects to the dwarf again. “Well, I, er… That’s, that’s very kind of you to say,” he responds at last, looking away to awkwardly watch his toes shuffle and curl on the ground rather than allowing himself to get caught up in Thorin’s intense gaze as he has so many times before. He can’t help remembering, after a promise like that, the way the trolls’ massive hands had felt pulling his arms and legs taut, and the look on Thorin’s face as he gazed up at Bilbo then, ‘horror’ and ‘shock’ such insufficient descriptors for someone who looked as though their entire world was crumbling right before their eyes…

“I also… I wanted to apologise,” Thorin goes on quietly, and Bilbo’s gaze snaps up to look at him again, though the dwarf seems to be mirroring him once more, staring down at his boots instead of at Bilbo, “for my behavior last night. I did not mean any offense. I only…” He hesitates, letting out a long, frustrated breath, before at last looking up and launching into his explanation. “The map Tharkûn spoke of is not a mere road map for our journey,” Thorin says, his eyes hard and lips tight as he meets Bilbo’s gaze once more. “It details a secret entrance into the Mountain that we hoped to use, since Smaug destroyed the front gates when he first invaded our home.”

“Oh. I see.” Perhaps something Gandalf had managed to divine with his magical powers? But then, Thorin had said that the map wasn’t Gandalf’s to keep… Bilbo purses his lips, glancing around at the others making ready to leave, and then leans in slightly, dropping his voice. “Is it meant to be kept a secret?” he asks.

“What? No,” Thorin frowns down at him in confusion. “All in the Company know of it already.”

Bilbo rears back, straightening his spine and rocking backward on his heels. Why— Why— Of all the nerve— “Right,” he bites out. “Right, so the whole Company knew about this already. So it was just _me_ you didn’t trust with this information.”

Thorin scowls down at him. “No!” he growls, and then squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, seems to be trying to take a breath and keep his temper in check. “It was not intentionally kept from you,” he says from between clenched teeth, and then finally looks down at Bilbo again. “It was only…”

“Only what?” Bilbo demands when Thorin hesitates again, glaring up at him.

“Only that you nearly fainted the last time you heard any mention of burgling or dragons!” Thorin snaps, and then immediately grimaces, as if he already regrets the words. Bilbo can feel a flush rising in his cheeks, embarrassment joining his anger, but he doesn’t back down, continuing to glare up at Thorin as the dwarf goes on talking, “The secret door is the _point_ of all this.” Thorin gestures vaguely to their camp, the Company around them, all the rest of the journey eastward, his voice low and strained, as if he is holding himself together through sheer willpower. “It’s the key to our plan. It was why we all gathered at your home in the first place, because Gandalf had said he would find us a halfling burglar—”

“ _Hobbit_ ,” Bilbo snaps, interrupting, in no mood now to tolerate any more such slights, no matter how minor.

Thorin stops, confusion clear on his face once more. “What?”

“We are called _hobbits!_ ” Bilbo spits out. “‘Halfling’ is a Big Person word! It’s how _they_ see us,” he snarls, his voice rising as his rant gains speed, “as if we’re only half what we ought to be, half what they are, _half people_ , when they’re the ones who’re so unnaturally tall, not proper sized at all! I’ve put up with it all these weeks, not least because _Gandalf_ is a Big Person and doesn’t know any better, but I’ve had just about enough of hearing that word from people who are _barely any taller than I am!_ ” He’s jabbing a finger in Thorin’s face by the time he finishes, and decides, for the sake of argument and his own sense of dignity, that he’s going to entirely ignore the fact of how much he has to tip his head back in order to look the dwarf in the eye.

Thorin stares at him for a very long, very tense moment, looking a bit like Bilbo has just told him most stridently that the sky is in fact made of meringue, and then finally says only, “Apologies. It won’t happen again.”

“Thank you,” Bilbo growls, folding his arms over his chest. When the dwarf doesn’t immediately return to his explanation about the map, he prompts, perhaps a touch sharply, “You were saying?”

Thorin gives a small nod, licking his lips once more, and goes on in a somewhat subdued tone, “Gandalf had said he would find us a hobbit to act as burglar…”

“Yes, yes, a burglar to search for some stone in the dragon’s hoard! You already told me all this back at Bag End!” Bilbo interrupts again with a wave of his hand, remembering that infuriating conversation by the fire in his own sitting room. He had indeed felt quite faint when he’d learned just what might have been expected of him, and then relieved that he absolutely would _not_ be going on any such mad quest— And yet here he is, halfway across Arda with no one but dwarves for company!

“Yes,” Thorin agrees, a hint of exasperation creeping into his voice again, “exactly. When I _burned_ the burglar’s contract, and decided we would come up with a _new_ plan. The secret door on my grandfather’s map was how the burglar was meant to _reach_ the hoard, and since you are no burglar, and under _no_ circumstances will I send you to face any dragon, I saw no point in troubling you with the existence of a plan that had so distressed you before, especially when that plan has already been abandoned!” Thorin looks away, scowling and clenching his jaw, his shoulders rising and falling subtly with his heavier breathing. “Gandalf still believes we should continue with the plan as he first devised it,” Thorin adds, quieter, without looking back at Bilbo. “So to answer your original question: _that_ is what we have been arguing over.”

“Gandalf thinks I should be your burglar after all, doesn’t he?” Bilbo asks, his anger beginning to ebb at last, replaced by suspicion – though not, for once, suspicion of Thorin and his motives. In all these weeks of carefully avoiding Thorin, it would seem Bilbo has quite forgotten who it was who had first tried to strong-arm him into joining this quest.

Thorin turns back to look at him, and Bilbo knows the answer without him having to say it – and then several of the others start yelling.

“Something’s coming!” Bilbo hears Bofur’s cry, raising the alarm, and he and Thorin both follow the crowd of pointing fingers towards the dust cloud on the horizon.

“Prepare yourselves!” Thorin bellows, drawing his elven sword from where it is slung across his back and shoving Bilbo behind him in one fluid move.

“Hey—!” Bilbo stumbles, has to grab at Thorin’s sleeve to keep himself upright, and then draws his own little sword, half stepping out from behind the dwarf king to see what’s going on, though Thorin keeps his arm out in front of Bilbo as if to block him from the potential fight.

“Dozens of feet approaching,” Nori calls, kneeling with one hand stretched out upon the ground rather than standing with weapons at the ready like most of the others – using what the dwarves refer to as their ‘stone sense,’ though Bilbo doesn’t see any stone here, only hard-packed earth. “They’re small, though… Too small to be orcs or humans,” the pointy-coiffed dwarf adds with a frown.

The column of dust rising into the air grows ever nearer, and after a second or two Bilbo can feel the vibrations himself, rattling through the dirt and up through his soles. Surely whatever it is, it must be traveling in quite a large herd. He has just enough time to wonder if perhaps they ought to instead make for the trees rather than risk being trampled by whatever is approaching, but then, out of the brush burst—

Rabbits.

They’re good-sized rabbits, most of them easily coming up past Bilbo’s waist even without counting their long ears, but still. Rabbits.

And then he sees the old man on the sleigh behind the rabbits.

“Gandalf!” this old man screeches, lurching off of his sleigh and towards the nearest dwarves, who back up hastily and brandish their weapons. “Where is Gandalf?!” he demands. “He was supposed to be here!”

“Who’s asking?!” Dwalin demands, his axes raised and ready to strike should the man come within range.

“That would be Radagast the Brown!” Gandalf’s voice suddenly thunders around them, and the grey wizard comes striding out of the trees a moment later, glaring down at them all. “And I would very much appreciate it if you did not attack him!”

“Another wizard,” Thorin growls, but he does lower his sword, and, after a brief moment of hesitation, Bilbo and the others follow suit.

“Gandalf!” Radagast gasps, and Bilbo can certainly see the resemblance now as the two of them meet in the center of their camp: Radagast is shorter but no less haggard and tattered than Gandalf is, his beard just as long and scraggly, his hat just as ridiculous, if less pointy. In some ways he is actually even more travel-stained and vagabondly, especially taking into account the bird’s nest built into his hat and the various little bits of feathers and dropping dotting his ratty brown robes.

“What it is? What has brought you so far from the Greenwood?” Gandalf asks, frowning down at him with concern. When Radagast only sputters and searches for words, Gandalf places a calming hand on his shoulder to lead him away, while his other hand produces his pipe seemingly from nowhere. “Here— Take a breath, have some Old Toby, and tell me all…”

The two bearded old men walk a short distance away to confer quietly between themselves, though Bilbo thinks he catches Radagast saying something about someone having risen from the dead before they are beyond his hearing. He shakes his head, figuring he must have misheard, and returns his sword to its sheath.

Beside him, Thorin heaves a quiet sigh, then calls to the others, “We’ll wait here a little while longer – but make sure your gear is ready to move at a moment’s notice!” He nods distractedly at the answers of assent and acknowledgement that he receives, and mutters some choice words about wizards and their scheming slowing the Company down. Thorin makes no move to follow the two old men or to find out what this newcomer’s business is, though. Instead, he looks down at his sword, turning it this way and that a few times before moving through a few lazy figure-eights, the blade almost singing as it cuts through the air, before he finally reaches back to slide it into its sheath.

“Why do you do that?” Bilbo finds himself asking all of a sudden, and Thorin looks down at him in surprise, eyebrows half-raised questioningly. “Practice so much, I mean?” Bilbo adds, feeling himself quail a little under the force of those blue, blue eyes, a shiver trying to tingle its way up his spine and all across his skin now that he’s not burning up with anger at the dwarf king. Quashing that feeling as best he can, he adds, just a touch sarcastically, “Aren’t you supposed to be a master swordsman already? Or should I perhaps go look for someone else to teach me?”

Thorin frowns a little, mouth twisting and brows flattening out at Bilbo’s attempt at humor. He gives a small snort, but, rather than respond in kind, he instead swings his pack down to the ground and reaches for the second sheath that is strapped onto it: his old, dwarven sword, Deathless, which has been all but set aside in favor of the new, elven blade. Thorin leans down to pull the short, angular sword out and then, straightening up, holds the hilt out towards Bilbo. “Take this,” he says, completely deadpan – and perhaps it’s just that, that absolute lack of inflection or emotion, that makes Bilbo suspect something, some trap opening up before him. Because it’s certainly not as if he can _read_ such a thing in Thorin’s eyes, or, or, or somehow simply _sense_ it from him! No, that… that would be impossible…

Gingerly, Bilbo wraps his fingers around the solid shaft of the hilt, making sure his toes are well clear should this turn into a repeat of the weapons fiasco in Bree… Thorin releases his grip just below the hand guard, and, yes, sure enough, it’s all Bilbo can do to keep the thing upright with both hands, even with its tip still resting on the ground.

Thorin lets him struggle for a few seconds, and then sweeps Deathless away from him with one hand. With the other, he reaches over his shoulder and draws the elven sword once more. “Now this,” Thorin says, his voice softer now, and somehow without any of the careful, clever subterfuge that had seemed to be there a minute before.

Pursing his lips, Bilbo takes the elven sword from him with no less trepidation than before, but finds he needn’t have worried. It is heavier than his own little blade, of course, and unwieldy for him, but then it is also twice the size of his sword, as long as Bilbo is tall! Still, he can lift it with ease, could even swing it about in a fight if he really needed to, unlike the dwarven-made sword.

“Alright, yes, they’re very different, anyone can see that,” he says at last, turning the sword round to offer the hilt to Thorin again. The dwarf takes it and begins returning it to its place on his back. “But it still doesn’t answer my question: why are you so intent on practicing with it every waking moment of the day? Shouldn’t a lighter sword be… well, _easier_ to use?”

“No,” Thorin replies, meeting Bilbo’s gaze once more after his sword and pack are back in place. “Your first observation was correct: they are _different_ ,” he explains. At Bilbo’s frown, he goes on, “I created Deathless with my own hands, and I have carried it, and fought with it, for over one hundred years. I could not know that sword better even if it were actually a part of my own body.

“But this one,” he says, reaching one hand back to touch the dragon’s tooth hilt of the elven sword. “I don’t even know its _name_ yet, much less how it will behave in battle. A good swordsman always takes the time to learn the feel of their equipment.” He pauses, a slight hint of a smile growing in the corner of his mouth. “And a _master_ swordsman knows that they are never done learning, and are never above a little more practice.”

Bilbo feels himself growing warm in the face once more, especially with Thorin smiling down at him like that, so warm and soft, like they’re sharing a secret between them, like Bilbo was never even angry with him… He clears his throat, looking away, refusing to let the answering smile he can feel trying to break across his face have its way. “Hm. Well. I suppose it could be that,” he says. “Or could be you just think you look fierce and kingly whenever you’re swinging that thing about.” He casts another glance up at Thorin, and the dwarf meets his gaze with slightly narrowed eyes – and yet he’s still smiling. He knows he's being mocked, yet he doesn’t seem to mind terribly.

The moment is shattered a second later, though, when a howl suddenly rips through the air.

“What— What— Was that a wolf?!” Bilbo demands, spinning to look all around, feeling his eyes popping open almost painfully wide as gooseflesh breaks out all across his skin. “Are there wolves out here?!”

“That was no wolf,” Bofur answers him, glancing back once before facing the east again as he hefts his mattock.

“There’s another group on the horizon!” Glóin calls, pointing.

“Bigger than before,” Nori adds. “Big enough to be—”

“Orcs,” Thorin spits, drawing his elven sword.

“Orcs?!” Bilbo echoes.

“Stay close,” Thorin tells him, thankfully seeming content to ignore Bilbo’s mindless, panicked squawking. “No matter what happens, stay behind me.”

Bilbo can only gape up at him, his tongue feeling as though it’s been frozen in place.

“Oh— Oh dear, oh no—” Radagast cries as he and Gandalf come hurrying over to rejoin the Company, robes fluttering and matching walking sticks clacking against the ground. “It’s that orc pack that’s followed me all the way from Dol Guldur! I thought I lost them in Rohan, but…”

“Apparently not,” Gandalf finishes for him, voice grave. He looks over at Thorin. “You must flee. If you’re recognized—”

Thorin scowls up at him, looking like he wants to argue, but the brown wizard speaks up again before he can. “I’ll lead them away!” Radagast announces, already striding back over toward his sleigh and his waiting team of rabbits. “We’ve been able to keep ahead of them this long, and there’s no sense in your little friends getting caught up in all this…”

“‘Little’?!” Dwalin protests.

“‘Friends,’” Thorin growls, low and sarcastic, though Bilbo doubts anyone else is near enough to hear him.

“Be careful, my friend,” Gandalf intones, stepping up to rest a hand on the other wizard’s shoulder again.

Radagast nods once, then looks up at Gandalf with a more lucid expression than Bilbo had thought him capable of. “You must tell the Council. You must show them—”

“I will,” Gandalf promises, and the clap on the back he gives Radagast turns into a slight push. “Go now.”

Without another word, the brown wizard is off, heading vaguely south-west, his rabbits picking up speed almost faster than Bilbo can believe, faster than any tame pony or pack animal, certainly. Gandalf turns to face him and Thorin, looking briefly around at all the others. “Well?” he asks after a beat of silence.

“Move out!” Thorin roars, taking the hint – and then his hand closes around Bilbo’s wrist, and they take off running.

Bilbo stumbles along through the tall grass and sparse trees, unable even to catch his breath enough to tell Thorin to release him. Plus, part of him is a little afraid he’d be left behind entirely were it not for the dwarf’s grip on his arm. He can hear Radagast whooping and hollering in the distance, trying to draw the orcs’ attention, and the howls from the wo— the _not_ -wolves, whatever they are, grow ever more numerous, ever closer, sending chills stabbing their way down Bilbo’s spine and all across his skin.

He hears a growl, a panting breath, just before an enormous nightmare beast comes leaping out of the brush right across his and Thorin’s path, massive jaws gaping wide with deadly sharp teeth looking for flesh to bite, tear into, rip apart… The world seems to tilt sideways, all other sound subsumed by the buzzing in his ears, as if someone has rung a dinner triangle right by his head, and Bilbo can only watch in dazed wonder as the animal’s beady eyes focus on him before it takes a single step forward – only to be cut down a moment later with a few quick slices of a long, shining blade.

Someone grabs his arm – his right arm, yanking hard, reminding him it’s still there, the touch hot against his wrist, burning away the chill from the snowdrifts – and then he is running again. He’s pulled and pushed and spun around, while the landscape swings wildly before his eyes. There are wolves everywhere, closing in, wolves and _orcs_ , their cackling voices mixing with the barks and growls, echoing in his ears. Bilbo can somehow feel the sun growing hot on his face even as snowflakes freeze his eyelashes together, the cold making it hard to think, hard to move, hard to breathe. They run, and stop, and run some more. There are voices yelling, Thorin yelling, Bilbo’s mother, screaming his name— He’s shoved to the side, stumbles backward, trips over something in the snow— no, no, the long grass: a rock, a rock the size of his fist, his fingers curling around it easily, fitting perfectly in the palm of his hand.

He doesn’t know quite what he’s doing until the rock is leaving his hand again, sailing through the air, hitting one of the not-wolf-things squarely in the eye. The monster falls, yelping, and the hobbit— no, _dwarf_ , the dwarf just in front of it avoids being bit in two.

There are more rocks, and now it’s as if Bilbo has never known anything else in his life: grabbing them up, winding his arm back, letting them fly, striking back at the wolves, one stone after another, over and over, so that he almost doesn’t hear Gandalf calling for them all.

“Here! Down here! Quickly!”

Bilbo spins, drops his armload of rocks, stumbling, looking around, trying to locate the wizard, when thick arms close around him, lifting him off his feet, and a voice growls in his ear, “Come _on_.” And then they are falling, tumbling, rolling down a steep incline, finally coming to a stop.

Bilbo can only lie still for what feels like an eternity, staring up at the stone ceiling above his head, the storm of sounds around him battering at his ears senselessly. A hand suddenly hauls Bilbo to his feet, and he stares down at it as it holds tight around his upper arm. Someone is talking, yelling, a single voice breaking out of the cacophony, the words ricocheting around inside Bilbo’s head without forming into anything intelligible.

“—alright?!”

The hand shakes him, and then another takes hold of his other arm. Bilbo finally looks up and finds Thorin’s face before his eyes, quite close, much closer than he’s accustomed to, at least while he’s awake.

“Bilbo!” Thorin yells, and shakes him again. “Are you _hurt?!_ ”

“Oh…” Bilbo blinks up at him, and then looks back down at himself. Oh, yes, it turns out those are in fact Thorin’s hands gripping his arms. Well, that makes sense now. But… he’d asked Bilbo something, hadn’t he? Oh, yes, right… “No… No, I don’t think so…” he manages to muddle out at last.

Thorin makes a strange noise then, almost like a growl, and then one of the hands releases his arm to instead pat roughly around Bilbo’s skull, thick fingers digging through his hair down to the scalp. Thorin pulls his hand back after a few seconds, and then stares at it so hard Bilbo rather expects to see blood on his palm – but the dwarf’s skin is clean when Bilbo gets a peek at it, or as near to clean as any of them can be considered after so many days on the road, anyway. He lifts his eyes to meet Thorin’s gaze again, and the king is giving him a suspicious, considering look. His other hand is still holding onto Bilbo’s arm; lucky that, as Bilbo feels himself begin to sway, his knees turning jittery and weak as his head feels like it’s being filled up with water.

“We should not linger here,” Gandalf says then, and Thorin finally looks away from Bilbo to glare up at the old wizard. Bilbo sways forward and nearly collides with Thorin’s fur-clad shoulder. No, no, he _does_ collide with the fur, and the shoulder underneath it, and perhaps it’s all the fluff and warmth of Thorin’s coat clogging up his ears, because he can hear Thorin and Gandalf exchanging words, but he can’t for the life of him make heads or tails of what they’re saying. Someone’s arm hooks around his waist, nearly lifting him off his feet, and then they are moving forward.

“I can walk,” Bilbo grumbles, turning his face away from the soft fur but then finding he must squint against the bright sunlight filtering down into the cave from… somewhere…

“Then walk,” Thorin’s voice responds, quiet and right by Bilbo’s ear. The arm doesn’t loosen from about his waist, though, and really, Bilbo is simply too weary to argue anymore at this point, and they limp along in relative silence for the next while until—

“This was your plan all along!” Thorin suddenly snarls, boots grinding to a halt on the stone path, and it takes Bilbo a moment to realize Thorin is not addressing him. “To seek refuge with our enemy!”

“You have no enemies here, Thorin Oakenshield,” Gandalf’s voice returns, though Bilbo cannot spare the energy to lift his head from where it lies against Thorin’s shoulder to look up at the wizard. “And quite a great need for refuge, it would appear…”

“We can look after our own—!” Thorin growls back, and the arm around Bilbo’s waist tightens once more, seeming to curl around him like a shield.

“What is it…?” Bilbo mumbles, trying to push himself upright, to find the elusive balance that will allow him to stand on his own feet, pushing feebly against Thorin’s side. “Where are we?”

“The valley of Imladris,” Gandalf answers him, and he steps aside to allow Bilbo a view out of the cave mouth where they’ve stopped and the vast valley beyond. Thorin’s hold around Bilbo finally, reluctantly, loosens and falls away, allowing him to take a single, tottering step forward towards the mouth of the passage. “In the common tongue, it is known by another name, of course…”

“Rivendell,” Bilbo breathes, looking out into the place he has heard so much about, read so much about, always dreamed of visiting, with its soaring cliffs and crashing waterfalls, the distant twirls of delicate elven architecture reflecting the sunlight like a thousand dew drops on the world’s most perfect field of wildflowers…

And then he has the strangest sensation like he’s falling, and everything goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Khuzdul Terms  
> Ignin! – Begin!  
> Rumush? – Ready?  
> Thafanu marakh zê’ – first defense practice
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> I'm mixing book & movie canon a bit here: in the book, it takes them several days to reach Rivendell after the encounter with the trolls, but the book also gives no reason for why Thorin would agree to go to Rivendell, so I'm using the idea that the orcs basically chased them there as in the movies. It wasn't actually mentioned in the movie, but since we see Azog & crew at Dol Guldur directly conferring with Sauron, I figured it made sense that they had followed Radagast from there and that was how they came upon Thorin & Co., rather than it being a big random coincidence that the exact orcs looking for him are in exactly the right spot to cross paths, in really dangerous elf-patrolled territory no less! Anyway, I hope all that made sense <3
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	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“We would only **beg** ,” Thorin spits, glaring at Tharkûn over his word choice, “to be allowed to shelter here until Master Baggins recovers.”_
> 
> _“Of course,” the elf lord agrees, blinking down at Thorin. “Rivendell welcomes you, Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór,” he says, his tone turning grave as he gives a regal nod._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you everyone who has read, left kudos, commented, and just generally stuck with this story, even with the slow updates. If it's any consolation, the chapters just keep getting longer :)

Thorin continues to keep a close watch on Master Baggins as he moves forward to join the wizard out on the ledge, scanning his One’s person for any sign of a hidden injury: blood showing through his clothing, favoring one leg, a limb moving at an odd angle, anything to explain why he has been so distracted and vacant since the orcs came upon them. Their bond is relatively quiet now and Master Baggins does not, at least, seem to be in any pain, not as far as Thorin can tell. The earlier storm of terror, panic, and desperation that had swept through the hobbit – nearly making Thorin lose his head in the heat of battle, even in such a small skirmish as that – seems to have been washed away in this new wave of numbness.

It is only this careful vigilance that allows him to spot the moment when Master Baggins’ knees begin to buckle, and Thorin rushes forward, managing to catch Bilbo and pull him back from the edge before he can go tumbling over it. The shocked outcry from the others at his back is lost in the echoing silence of his One’s unconscious state: where before there had been a sort of dull hum, a dazed lightheadedness that had followed their tumble down into the hidden ravine, now there is nothing. He can sense nothing at all from the hal— from the hobbit. If Master Baggins were not at that very moment warm and solid in Thorin’s arms, breathing and alive and at least _apparently_ unharmed, Thorin would have feared him dead with their connection so suddenly gone quiet.

He is startled out of his worrying by Gandalf’s gnarled hand appearing in his field of vision, laying itself along the side of the hobbit’s face. The wizard’s eyes are shut when Thorin looks up at him, but after a moment Gandalf frowns, and opens them again, and straightens back up to his full height, dropping his hand.

“I can find nothing wrong with him,” Tharkûn murmurs, shaking his head. Thorin scowls, his arms curling tighter around Bilbo. “Nothing I can cure, at any rate,” the wizard adds with a sort of defensive shrug.

“Óin!” Thorin calls, turning away, Bilbo’s unconscious form tucked securely against his chest.

“Lord Elrond of Rivendell,” Gandalf goes on then, his voice ringing out and drawing Thorin’s gaze back around to him, almost afraid, for half a second, that the elf lord had actually just appeared there amongst them, “is, however, one of Middle Earth’s most skilled healers.” He holds Thorin’s gaze for a silent beat, before concluding, “I’m sure he would give us shelter, and no doubt would be able to properly diagnose and heal whatever ails our Mister Baggins.”

Thorin clenches his teeth, glaring up at the wizard. He doesn’t allow himself to look down at Master Baggins, so still and small in Thorin’s arms, or back at Óin, who has pushed his way through to the front of the Company, his bag of relatively limited medical supplies no doubt in hand. He cannot allow himself to look away now, to concede in this battle of wills, the weight of the quest and the welfare of all his people sitting across his shoulders, along with millennia of elven treachery, secret moon runes and unreadable maps be damned—

Bilbo gives a tiny groan, eyes still closed, shifting in Thorin’s arms and turning his face into Thorin’s shoulder.

“Lead on,” Thorin snaps.

Tharkûn raises his eyebrows, almost as if in disbelief, and there is certainly a smug smile on his grizzled old face as he turns to do just that without another word.

Bilbo gives a few more quiet groans as they descend the steep cliffside trail into the valley, and then, after a few minutes, he finally opens his eyes again. It is only to glance briefly around them, though, before pressing his face into Thorin’s shoulder once more, one small hand curling into the front of Thorin’s jerkin. Exhaustion is written in every line of his expression, just as it radiates off of him and flows through their soulbond, exhaustion but still no pain at least, nor any of his previous fear.

The fact that Bilbo does not protest to being carried in Thorin’s arms only worries him further, though, cutting short any relief Thorin might have felt at seeing his One awake.

Gandalf leads them across one of the spindly bridges into the elven settlement, and Thorin cannot help noticing the flickers of movement on the other pathways and bridges around them. They curve and twist every which way, some rising higher into the air while others descend toward the valley floor, because elves have apparently never heard of a straight line. There are sentries running along these paths, darting ahead to report their coming, perhaps to raise the alarm so that they can slam their gates closed just before the dwarves reach them, in typical elven fashion…

There are no gates barring their path when they reach the entrance to the city, though, only a pair of silent, stoic guards standing on either side of a long, curving staircase. Gandalf stops before them, and, after only a short pause, a third elf in a long flowing robe descends the stairs to meet them. The elf’s hands are clasped calmly behind their back, despite the wary glance they cast towards the Company before turning to greet Gandalf. “Mithrandir,” the elf says, bowing their head slightly to the wizard.

“Lindir,” Gandalf returns, stepping forward, apparently familiar with this elf. “Is Lord Elrond about? I’m afraid one in our number has fallen rather ill, and I was hoping to consult his skills.”

“‘M not ill,” Bilbo mutters into Thorin’s shoulder, still too weary to manage more than that.

“You collapsed back there,” Thorin responds quietly, frowning down at him. Bilbo grimaces, his hand fisting more securely in the front of Thorin’s jerkin, but he doesn’t argue further.

“My Lord Elrond is away at the moment,” Lindir is saying in answer to the wizard, though their gaze flicks briefly over to Bilbo and Thorin.

“Away?” Tharkûn asks, in that irritating manner of his that suggests he already knows the answer to his own question. “Where?”

The elf opens their mouth to respond, but then pauses, their gaze snapping over to look beyond the dwarves, back the way the Company had come. A moment later, the blare of a hunting horn cuts through the air, followed quickly by approaching hoofbeats that reverberate up through the stone of the bridge.

“Close ranks!” Dwalin yells, and a hand grabs the back of Thorin’s collar, yanking him backward into the center of the group.

“What— What is it?! What’s happening?!” Bilbo gasps, struggling for the first time in Thorin’s grasp, even as his hands ball into fists against Thorin’s chest and sharp, nauseating fear spears through their bond once more. The hoofbeats grow louder, as do the shouts from the Company, and then they are abruptly surrounded by elves mounted on horseback. There are a dozen of them, perhaps more, riding in churning, concentric circles around the dwarves, hiding their numbers through confusion and trickery, leaving Thorin unsure where to look, from what quarter to expect the greatest threat, how to draw his sword and keep a hold of Bilbo at the same time—

One elf breaks away from the swirling rings after a moment, riding over to Gandalf and Lindir. “Gandalf!” they greet the wizard heartily, and, as if that is some signal to them, the other elves cease their circling, drawing their horses to a stop not far from the Company.

“Lord Elrond,” Tharkûn replies, smiling as the lead elf dismounts. And then he goes on, speaking in elvish, and their would-be host responds in kind.

Thorin sighs, relaxing only marginally. Of course the elves would insist on conversing in their own language, rather than one more commonly known by all the free peoples – and of course Gandalf would be complicit in this exclusion, for all that he is supposedly a part of their Company. Typical. The others begin to murmur suspiciously around him, just as incapable of understanding the conversation as Thorin is himself, save for a half-remembered word here or there. He hasn’t studied any of the elven tongues since he was small and learning statecraft and diplomacy at his father’s knee, and no one else amongst their number besides Balin would have ever had cause to learn…

“Something about a… a hunting party? Orcs, from the south?” Bilbo murmurs, seemingly to himself, his brows knit and eyes closed as he rests his cheek against Thorin’s shoulder.

Thorin stares down at him. “You speak Sindarin?”

Bilbo’s gaze flicks up, hazel eyes squinting as it seems to cost him a great deal of effort to focus on Thorin. He still thrums with nervous energy, heart beating like a rabbit’s where he is pressed against Thorin’s chest, though it is finally beginning to slow once more. The translation seems almost to have a calming, therapeutic effect on the hobbit, giving him something to dwell upon instead of whatever ails him. “I _read_ Sindarin,” Bilbo replies after a moment with a small, sleepy frown, before closing his eyes once more. “Haven’t had much chance to actually speak it with anyone…”

Before he can respond to that, Gandalf speaks again, at last switching back into Westron. “As to why we’ve come, I was just telling Lindir— Thorin, step forward, won’t you?” the wizard calls, glancing back and beckoning to him with the wave of one hand.

Thorin grinds his teeth at the casual way the wizard orders him about, but the Company parts before him anyhow, allowing him to step up to the front once more. Dwalin and Glóin both follow, clinging close behind Thorin’s shoulders, weapons still in hand, just in case the situation should turn ugly.

“Our little halfling, you see, has fallen ill,” Gandalf says – _Hobbit,_ Thorin thinks, grinding his teeth all the more, and feels Bilbo wrinkle his nose against his shoulder at the same moment – “and so we hoped to beg your aid—”

“We have a healer of our own,” Thorin breaks in with a growl, and Gandalf and both of the elves not on horseback turn to look down at him in surprise, while Bilbo grimaces again and hisses at him, “ _Be polite!_ ”

“We would only _beg_ ,” Thorin spits, ignoring his One for the moment in favor of glaring at Tharkûn over his word choice, “to be allowed to shelter here until Master Baggins recovers.”

“Of course,” the elf lord agrees, blinking down at Thorin. “Rivendell welcomes you, Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór,” he says, his tone turning grave as he gives a regal nod. Before Thorin can do more than part his lips in surprise at apparently being so easily recognized, Elrond turns away to speak a few quiet words to Lindir, who nods, bows, and then scurries away back up the stairs. “Lindir will see that appropriate rooms are prepared for you and your companions,” Lord Elrond explains, turning back to face Thorin.

Bilbo mumbles something unintelligible into Thorin’s shoulder, something along the lines of ‘ _That’s very kind of you,_ ’ if the small bloom of gratitude and relief filtering through their bond is anything to go by. He seems even weaker now than before, utterly wrung out by the second fright of the elves surrounding them and by the effort of speaking, after he had seemed to be recovering a little before.

“Thank you,” Thorin says for Bilbo, forcing his gaze back up to meet Lord Elrond’s and forcing his mind back to the matter at hand, rather than allowing himself to get lost worrying over his One’s fluctuating health.

Lord Elrond nods again. “Should you require anything more, please don’t hesitate to send word to me,” he says, gesturing to another attendant who seems to appear out of nowhere and beckons the dwarves to follow deeper into Rivendell.

 

* * *

 

The rooms Lord Elrond has had his servants set aside for them are spacious and grand, a whole wing of the elf’s home, it would seem, sectioned off from the rest by a tall pair of pale, wooden doors. The attendant who had led them here points out the bedrooms branching off of what is to be their own private courtyard and balcony for the duration of their stay, and informs Thorin that there are multiple baths as well, some shared between the bedrooms while a few of the bedchambers have their own private washrooms. The others begin to break off to explore their lodgings and no doubt claim their beds, while their guide continues down one corridor to another set of double doors. Behind these is another bedchamber, larger yet than any of the ones Thorin had glimpsed on the way in. Not that it matters; Thorin certainly isn’t about to object to his One being afforded pride of place.

Bilbo releases a long sigh as Thorin settles him carefully atop the enormous bed, his fingers unwinding slowly from the deathgrip he’d had on Thorin’s jerkin. “Thank you,” he says, and for a moment Thorin thinks the hobbit is addressing him – but Bilbo leans over on the bed as he speaks, raising his voice a little and looking around Thorin to the elf standing in the doorway, “This is all very lovely!” The elf offers him a small, serene smile and a short bow before disappearing down the hallway again.

Thorin tries to smother his sigh, clenching his jaw tight and looking away.

“Thank you as well,” Bilbo murmurs then, drawing Thorin’s gaze back to him. He finds Master Baggins looking down at his fingers where they pick idly at the bedclothes, toes curling in a mimicry of the same movement as his feet dangle over the side of the bed. “I… I really don’t know what came over me back there, and if you hadn’t caught me…”

“You needn’t thank me for that,” Thorin replies quietly, looking away as Óin comes through the open doorway. Protecting his One from danger is instinctual, and something Thorin had known he would have to do from the moment he laid eyes on the soft little creature dithering in his front parlor.

Óin comes up alongside the bed, pulling open his healer’s kit as he does so and setting it on the small bedside table. “Alright, lad, what seems to be the trouble?”

“What? Oh bother, you’re all serious about this, aren’t you?” Bilbo asks, blanching as he looks from one dwarf to the other, hands curling almost spasmodically in the front of his shirt. “I’m fine, really!” He’s irritated and fidgety underneath the weariness still washing through their bond, but even beyond that, there seems to be… Thorin frowns. A return of his earlier nervousness, fear even? But why, when surrounded by none but the Company?

“Did he take a blow to the head?” Óin asks, addressing Thorin instead.

“Not that I saw,” Thorin replies, still studying his One. He hates to admit – to _realize_ – that he hadn’t actually had eyes on the hobbit for every moment of their mad dash from the orcs. He had kept a hold on Master Baggins’ arm for as long as he could, but then had resorted to simply shoving his One behind him when it seemed they were surrounded and would have to make a stand. It’s possible Master Baggins could have fallen, or collided with a tree branch, or been hit by something thrown by their enemies, and Thorin would be none the wiser.

Bilbo’s eyes find Thorin’s, the hobbit’s brow creasing with a small, curious frown, but Thorin drops his gaze, arms folding across his chest and jaw clenched tight against the sickening knowledge of just how close he’d come to losing everything.

“Have ye had any headache?” Óin is asking the hobbit, drawing his attention away from Thorin again. “Any ringing in your ears?”

“Er, no. Neither,” Bilbo replies, then gives a small, indignant squawk when Óin grabs his chin to turn the hobbit’s face from side to side.

“Hmm… No sign of bleeding from the ears,” the healer comments, then, turning Bilbo’s face forward again, adds, “nor from the nose. Assuming hobbits bleed like the rest of us,” Óin comments, pausing to raise an eyebrow at Bilbo.

“Yes, of course we do!”

Thorin turns away, scrubbing one hand over his forehead. His One bleeding in any context is the last thing he wants to think about…

Óin hums thoughtfully to himself, before turning back to his task. “Right. Open up.”

“What—?” Bilbo starts, and Thorin turns back toward them just in time to see the hobbit trying to pull his head out of Óin’s grasp, though all he gets are the tips of the healer’s fingers jammed between his jaws for his trouble, like a livestock animal being force-fed its medicine. Thorin sighs; he’s been in the same position too many times himself to try arguing with Óin’s methods.

“Hmm,” Óin says again, peering close and nudging the hobbit’s lips aside one at a time. “No blood on yer teeth either. Follow my finger with your eyes,” he instructs next, releasing Bilbo’s jaw and raising the forefinger on his free hand to move slowly from side to side in front of Bilbo’s face. “Well,” he says, straightening up once more after several silent seconds of moving his hand and closely watching the hobbit’s reactions, “we’ll want to keep an eye on ye just in case, no telling with such a soft little skull as yours, but concussion seems unlikely at this point.”

“Oh… Good?” Bilbo replies, massaging his jaw and then his ‘soft little skull’ with one hand.

Thorin feels his entire body sag at Óin’s words. Part of him, it seems, had been waiting for the healer to discover some source of internal bleeding, a dire wound that had somehow gone overlooked until now, and declare Bilbo past saving.

Of course, this just leaves the question of what _had_ caused his collapse earlier still unanswered.

“Besides, I think I’d remember hitting my head hard enough to cause all that much damage,” Master Baggins grouses, shimmying slowly, tiredly, back from the edge of the bed and further from Óin’s reach. “Even in all the confusion,” he adds in a mutter – and a strange little blot of embarrassment, of shame, comes burbling across their connection.

Thorin knits his brow, frowning as he watches the hobbit and thinking over the morning’s events yet again. _Confusion_ is the key word, indeed. Master Baggins had been confused before he’d collapsed, staring up at Thorin dumbly as he tried to ask if he was hurt. If not during the fight, then perhaps it had been when they’d jumped down into the hidden tunnel that led into the elves’ valley… That leap down into the unknown would have been the most likely time for him to have struck his head, tumbling over each other as they had been, even though Thorin had tried his best to shield him from the rocky slope.

But even before that, he realizes, when Gandalf had revealed the location of the tunnel, when he had called out to them all to follow, Bilbo had seemed confused _then_ , disoriented, had looked at Thorin like he didn’t recognize him…

He remembers again the sheer terror and panic that had overcome the hobbit, remembers a shared glass of wine in a comfortable sitting room, and all of a sudden he’s certain: there was no blow to the head, nor any other injury.

“That will be all for now, I think, Óin,” Thorin says with another sigh.

Óin nods, closing up his bag again, unneeded in this case. “I’ll be back to check on ye in one hour,” he tells Bilbo, before turning for the door, clasping Thorin’s shoulder once as he goes.

Thorin turns to face his One and busies himself with pulling back the bedclothes rather than meeting Master Baggins’ gaze. “Is this a very common occurrence among hobbits?” he asks casually. “Fainting from sheer fright?”

Master Baggins shifts to allow Thorin to pull the blankets out from under him before moving onto the newly revealed sheet below. “No,” he responds, and he is glaring when Thorin glances at him again.

“You nearly fainted when you first heard of our quest to take back the Mountain,” he points out, hands still on the blankets as he continues to lean in over Master Baggins. “And these orcs and wargs were a much more immediate threat than the dragon—”

“Don’t— Don’t _mention_ those foul creatures!” Master Baggins cuts him off, gasping, then shuddering and wrapping his arms around himself – and for just a second, Thorin can almost swear he feels an icy breeze brush across his skin, for all that it’s nearly the middle of summer.

He stares at the shivering hobbit, then looks down at the bedclothes under his hands. “Here,” Thorin offers, and pulls the blankets up and around Master Baggins, who gratefully cocoons himself in them, flopping back to burrow into the bed’s many pillows as he does so. The same fear Thorin had sensed from him earlier has returned, along with that strange numbness, a sort of distance, disconnectedness, like a chasm is opening up between them, though he still seems to be able to feel all that his One feels, their bond unchanged. Which means… Which means that numbness and disconnection isn’t something coming between the two of them, but rather something Bilbo is feeling himself.

“You’re safe now,” he says gruffly, feeling as though he’s floundering, making more a mess of things with every word out of his mouth. “There’s no need to fear anymore—”

“I know that!” Master Baggins snaps from within his pillow fortress. “I know they’re—” he gasps on that word, and another phantom blast of freezing air blows over Thorin “—that they’re gone, but I still— Oh, it’s so _stupid_ , why can’t I just _stop remembering?!_ ”

Thorin stills, his gaze seeking out his One’s face once more, or what little he can see of it anyway. “Have you… encountered creatures like that before?” he asks carefully, making sure to soften his tone.

“Not precisely like those,” Bilbo sighs, and he is back to sounding more weary than anything else, even as their bond pulses with misery and… shame? “But near enough, it would seem.”

Thorin closes his eyes for a moment, pressing his lips together. Of course: battle visions. It should have been obvious, he thinks, especially when it became clear that the hobbit was physically unharmed. He had assumed, though, that such a soft little being, who had lived such a soft life in a soft, peaceful land, could never possibly have experienced anything to leave a psychological scar like this. What experience could Bilbo Baggins possibly have with orcs and the like, how could he have ever—?

Unless this is not his first time leaving the borders of his precious Shire.

That would make sense, Thorin supposes. It would help explain why Gandalf was so adamant about bringing him on as their burglar, even before they had convened in the hobbithole and realized their soulbond… Now, he can only curse the wizard yet again for potentially knowing what trauma lay beneath the hobbit’s polite exterior and saying nothing, _doing_ nothing to protect him, nothing to enable Thorin to protect his One from this unseen threat.

Though, he must admit, it is not the wizard who has kept Thorin from his One, kept them from speaking and exploring their bond as they ought. He draws in a deep breath, praying that the right words will come to his lips as he pushes his way past his own cowardice, past his instinctive desire to simply turn away, to accept his One’s rejection as he has so many times before, and instead focuses on what he can feel through their bond: shame, he’s sure of it now, hot and nauseating, turning the piled pillows and blankets into a layer of armor against any who might see this natural reaction as weakness – just as Thorin had done mere moments ago.

“It is nothing to be ashamed of,” Thorin murmurs, and meets the hobbit’s gaze when Bilbo finally looks up at him, meets his suspicion with as much comfort and security as he can muster. “It happens to all of us,” he goes on quietly. “I still wake to the sound of orcs in the night,” he says, recalling, as Bilbo no doubt does as well, how he had jerked awake at the mere mention of orcs early in their journey, and how he had raged at his sister-sons for thinking such a thing was a joking matter. The hobbit’s fright in that instance makes more sense to him now as well, not the naïve fear of the unknown Thorin had dismissed it for back then, but the terror of one who has seen such monsters before. “And any flames that grow too large,” he goes on after a moment, “that are not contained in a pipe or a hearth… Those give me troubled dreams to this day.” That one is harder to speak aloud; orcs are one thing, the fear and hatred of them something all dwarves – all the free peoples really – share. But for a dwarf, a _smith_ , to fear fire…

“Because of the—?” Bilbo says, but doesn’t finish his question: he won’t speak the name of the foul thing that plagues Thorin’s nightmares, showing more courtesy than Thorin had to him earlier.

Thorin nods, folding his arms, for just a moment feeling the heat again, smelling the stench of the poison gases the dragon exhaled. He shoves the memory away, though, wrestling it back into its tightly-sealed box, into the hearth that feeds the forge of his revenge, the will that drives him to retake the Mountain, to never stop, never falter until the beast lies dead.

Bilbo stares up at him for a long moment, pushing his blankets back a little and no doubt attempting to parse the wash of emotions he must sense coming from Thorin. “So why aren’t you a nervous wreck like me after facing those orcs?” he asks at last.

Thorin gives a quiet huff of mirthless laughter, leaning his hip into the side of the mattress. “Practice,” he answers honestly, meeting Bilbo’s gaze once more. He can feel the skitter of what the hobbit referred to as nerves in a back corner of his mind as the vision attempts to break free, to subsume him in flames and blood and screams once more – but it’s weak and distant, only the barest brush of memory brought on by speaking on this subject. “I’ve had many years to learn my limits, what brings the visions on and what I can endure without being overwhelmed.”

Bilbo looks down, lost in thought and uncertainty for several seconds, before saying, “Most people in the Shire try to simply forget. It’s considered rather impolite to do anything other than act as though it never happened.”

Thorin frowns. _‘Most people in the Shire…’_ So perhaps Master Baggins had not had to leave his home to meet with trouble, as Thorin had originally supposed. But what ills could have befallen that peaceful land, to leave the Shire apparently unscathed and its people as complacent as ever? “In my experience, that is rarely helpful,” he growls, setting aside his suppositions for the moment. Regardless of where it had happened, he cannot stand the thought that his One had been shamed for being in pain, for surviving some terrible event. His opinion of hobbitish society, if possible, only continues to worsen. “But Óin might have more useful advice for you.”

“Right.” Master Baggins nods, sinking further back into his pillows, and, unless Thorin is mistaken, there is the slightest tinge of disappointment seeping through their bond now.

“If…” Thorin begins, and has to swallow past the tightness in his throat, feeling as though he’s stepping out onto an untested ledge, liable to crumble away under his feet at any moment. “If you wish to speak about your experiences, or, or any of it, I would be happy to listen.”

“Oh,” Master Baggins breathes, and something warmer filters through to Thorin now as the hobbit looks back up at him. “That… I don’t know. But I suppose that might be nice,” he says at last – and then breaks off into a jaw-cracking yawn.

“But not right now,” Thorin replies, smiling slightly, ruefully, well familiar himself with the bone-deep exhaustion that comes on the heels of reliving such a traumatic experience. “Rest,” he tells the hobbit, and dares to lay one hand atop the mound of a shoulder showing through all his blankets. “You’re safe.”

“Mm,” Bilbo mumbles in agreement, snuggling ever further into his pillows and closing his eyes, his mind quieting to the dull hum of sleep in mere moments.

Thorin backs away slowly, unwilling as ever to take his eyes from his One’s sleeping face, only beginning to turn away when he reaches the open doorway – and then jumping slightly when he comes face to face with Balin, apparently waiting around to speak with him. “What— What is it?” Thorin asks, taking care to keep his voice quiet, and then glances once back toward the bed, before reaching for the double doors and pulling them closed behind him.

“I’ve just been walking around our apartments here,” Balin says, lowering his voice as well. “Everyone’s settling in well enough, only…” He pauses, and despite his seeming reluctance, there’s a slight twinkle in the older dwarf’s eye, “We seem to be short a bed or two.”

“What?” Thorin frowns. There had seemed to be numerous bedrooms when they had arrived… But for these elvish accommodations to turn out to be nowhere near so welcoming as they had appeared at first glance hardly comes as any surprise, blasted weed-eaters.

“There are fourteen in our Company, not including the wizard,” Balin says, and indeed, Gandalf had stayed behind, conversing with Lord Elrond, rather than joining them here. He no doubt has a regular room of his own somewhere, familiar as he is with these elves. “But only twelve beds. Nori and Dwalin have already claimed one for themselves, which leaves twelve of us and eleven beds, meaning…” He doesn’t finish his sentence, instead only tipping his head towards the doors at Thorin’s back.

Thorin stares at him, feeling somehow both hot and chilled all at once. Besides Nori and Dwalin, he and Bilbo are the only other bonded pair. Bombur and Glóin left their Ones with their families in the Blue Mountains, while others, like Bifur, are awaited in the Halls already. The others all have their dalliances, various friendships and romances between them, but dwarven relationships tend to be fairly opaque to outsiders, who don’t know how to read their beads and braids, often can’t even tell a dwarf’s gender much less their marital status… Yet the elves seem to have been able to spot the two pairs of soulmates amongst the Company.

Or maybe it’s just a coincidence, he thinks, shaking his head. Most likely the elves simply didn’t care enough to ensure that there were as many beds as dwarves. “It’s no matter,” he says. “If the rest of the beds are anything like this one,” he jerks his head back towards Master Baggins’ room, “I can bunk with Fíli and Kíli easily enough.” Why, all three of them could probably fit across that mattress, with room to spare. And having a bed to split at all is frankly a luxury, far from the worst lodgings or sleeping arrangements they’ve ever had to endure.

Balin is still smiling slightly, though his mirth seems at least to have given way to sympathy now. “I wouldn’t call them small necessarily,” he hedges, “but the rest are nowhere near so grand as either my brother’s or Master Baggins’ beds, as it happens.”

Thorin sighs, running his fingers over his eyes before squeezing them into the bridge of his nose. “We’ll make do,” he growls, and Balin only nods, allowing Thorin to escape and go in search of Óin to inform him of what he’d learned about Master Baggins’ condition.

 

* * *

 

The day passes quietly, the elves thankfully keeping away and leaving the Company in peace in their secluded wing. Master Baggins is still sleeping when Óin comes to check on him next, though he rouses easily enough, Thorin can see as he lingers in the doorway, and Óin seems satisfied. They eat a sparse luncheon at midday out on the open terrace at the center of their shared apartment, overlooking the cliffs and waterfalls of the elves’ hidden valley. Thorin insists they ration their food as they would any other day of their journey; he will not allow himself to hope that these elves will reprovision them out of their own stores. There is some grumbling, Master Baggins’ voice among them, but Thorin holds firm, and the last he sees of his One is the hobbit’s coattails as he slips away into his private room once more, lunch and cup of tea in hand.

The afternoon is spent resting, mending clothes and maintaining weaponry, and washing the dirt of the road from their gear and their bodies alike in the baths scattered between the bedchambers. The other dwarves have spread out through the apartment, each claiming a bed with their shed outer layers of coats and packs and boots – and those beds are, Thorin finds, not much wider than a single dwarf, as Balin had intimated. There are several plush chairs besides the two beds on either wall of the room Fíli and Kíli have taken for themselves, but nothing else save the floor that could offer a surface on which to sleep. Sharing would have been one thing, had the beds been large enough for two or more, but as it is Thorin is certainly not about to ask either of his nephews to give up their bed for him.

So it’s the floor, or one of the couches out in the common area.

Evening is just approaching when the double doors at the entrance to their wing open again, admitting the elf Lindir. Thorin and several of the others are on their feet in a moment, hands instinctively reaching for their weapons, but Lord Elrond’s attendant makes no move past the doorway, nor are there any armed guards in sight in the corridor beyond.

“What do you want?” Thorin asks, stepping forward.

Lindir regards him with an icy gaze, but says, “My Lord Elrond bids me to extend an invitation for you and all your companions to dine with him this evening.”

Thorin blinks, admittedly caught off guard. He feels a tiny nudge in his back – Balin, he sees with a quick glance – and clears his throat, looking up at the elf again. “We would be honored to accept.”

Lindir nods solemnly and turns back to the corridor outside. “I shall lead you to the dining chamber as soon as you wish to depart,” they say, leaving Thorin to look around at the assembled dwarves.

“Two minutes,” he says, and they all rush off to don coats and boots and to tell their brethren who are still in their bedrooms.

Speaking of… Thorin makes his way down the corridor to the doors of Master Baggins’ room, closed and silent once more ever since the hobbit had taken his lunch away with him a few hours before. They have all of them given him space, as Óin had seemed confident that he was out of danger, and Thorin has not felt anything out of the ordinary through their bond since that morning. Still, there is something that makes Thorin’s steps quicken just a little, something that prevents him from waiting more than a moment between rapping his fist on the door and reaching for the latch to let himself in, some desire, some _need_ to see his One with his own eyes—

“Just a mome— Ah! What are you doing?!” Master Baggins cries, freezing in the doorway between bedchamber and bath, hair still dripping wet onto the towel that is draped over his shoulders and that engulfs his form down past the top of the short trousers he wears, sized as it is for ‘big people,’ as he would say. Still, there is a slice of bare skin visible between the two sides of the towel, as wide as Thorin’s palm and running from the hobbit’s throat all the way down to his navel, only lightly covered with hair by dwarven standards, paler than his hands or face or feet, looking soft and creamy and Thorin cannot look away.

Until small, hobbitish hands clutch the towel closed around him like a cloak, that is. Thorin looks up, blinking rapidly, trying to remember what purpose had brought him in here, and finds Master Baggins glaring at him.

“You know,” the hobbit says, doing a good job of sounding annoyed though Thorin can feel his embarrassment and the lingering shame from earlier, can practically hear Master Baggins’ heart beating in his ears – nothing more than an involuntary response to Thorin’s preoccupation, though, no doubt, “the _point_ of knocking is to wait for a reply. Or do they not teach you dwarves that?”

“Apologies,” Thorin murmurs, feeling a touch of his own annoyance now. So much for his earlier gratitude, for the heartfelt talk of their deepest fears… “You seem to be feeling better,” he comments, a bit acidly.

Master Baggins flushes slightly and ducks his head. “I am, thank you,” he replies, addressing his toes, before looking back up at Thorin with a small, wry smile. “I’ve had a nap, and a meal, and a bath. That and a quiet evening smoke can cure just about anything, my father used to say.” He pauses, purses his lips, and then adds a bit quieter, “I’m sorry to be snappish; you just startled me, is all.”

Thorin releases a breath, nodding his head. Snappishness seems yet another area in which they are well matched. “Lord Elrond has invited us to dine with him.”

“Oh!” Master Baggins exclaims, straightening his posture, and then scurries across the room to his traveling pack. “I’ll just need a minute to get ready,” he calls distractedly, his back to Thorin as he rubs the towel over his hair with one hand and digs through his pack for a clean shirt with his other.

“We’ll be waiting,” Thorin answers him, and backs out of the room once more, pulling the door closed behind him. He simply stands there a moment after doing so, though, hands still on the matching door handles, and lets his head tip forward to rest against the seam between the two pale doors. Closing his eyes, Thorin draws in a long breath, willing his heart to slow and his blood to cool, cursing himself for even daring to _think_ of garnering any pleasure from having, yet again, trespassed into his One’s privacy.

Unbidden, images from their shared dreams over the past weeks rise in Thorin’s mind once again. They have not all been so erotically charged – or so ludicrous – as that first when Thorin found himself suddenly standing half-naked before a hot forge while his hobbitish soulmate looked on in clear admiration. Most of the time, Master Baggins’ dreams were nowhere near so intense: random memories, minutiae of the day’s travels, things Thorin would later be aware of having observed from a distance through their bond without actually featuring in any of them himself.

But, once, Thorin had drifted to sleep only to find himself suddenly with a lap full of soft, pliant hobbit. Master Baggins’ thighs had been curled around Thorin’s waist as they sat facing each other, the hobbit drawing his hands gently down Thorin’s bare chest, soft fingertips scraping through his hair and tracing along the lines of his tattoos. It is always more difficult in dreams to remember the reasons and rationales his waking mind repeated like a mantra, why he must pull away, why they ought to stop and talk about all this, why they shouldn’t just let the dream run its course and inevitably become something more, even if it’s something neither of them are entirely ready for yet…

As mesmerized as Bilbo had seemed with the markings on Thorin’s chest, Thorin was equally enthralled as he studied his One’s face, so much closer than he is ever allowed while awake, his gaze tracing the curve of an eyebrow, the spark of gold amidst the green in his eyes, the sweep of his round nose… He had begun to lean in closer, daring to nuzzle at one lock of hair that hung against the hobbit’s temple, as his hands had traced up Bilbo’s arms to his shoulders, fingering the collar of his ever-present, proper little button up shirt. It was a strange thing, he had thought at the time, considering Thorin was always stripped to the waist in his One’s imaginings. Unfair, too, as Thorin would like to look and feel and explore just as much as Bilbo…

He can’t say now if his hands had actually reached for the buttons on Master Baggins’ shirt then or if it had still been nothing more than that hazy, tremulous thought, though it doesn’t matter so much in a dream: thought and action become one, intention and feeling all tied up together without the limitations of physical form to slow them down. Either way, the hobbit had suddenly jerked away from him, eyes wide and staring as he stumbled back from Thorin, one hand clutching the front of his shirt, and all the previous softness and warmth had shattered into fear and… and shame.

A moment later, Thorin had found himself awake once more, staring up at the clear night sky while most of the Company snored around him. It had felt like nothing so much as a rejection at the time, but now, combined with today’s events… Thorin frowns to himself, shaking his head as he steps back from the doors. There is something there, connecting all of this, but he cannot see what it is yet. Nor is he in any position to demand a confidence from Master Baggins.

Perhaps hobbits are simply shy about their bodies, a cultural aversion to nudity and nothing more, he thinks, remembering the times on the road thus far when they’ve all stopped to bathe and rinse their clothing, and Master Baggins had always managed to go off on his own somewhere out of sight. That’s likely all it is, he decides, a mere difference in upbringing, a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of being seen unclothed in public. And Thorin is seeing shadows where there are none, the flight from the orcs and then the subsequent fear for his One’s life and health now making him jumpy, paranoid.

Taking another deep breath, he shakes those thoughts off and goes to join the others as they make ready to leave for dinner.

 

* * *

 

Lindir leads them on a winding path through the elven settlement, intended to confuse and disorient them, Thorin suspects, though the elves have failed to take into account the stone paving their pathways and how it speaks to any savvy dwarf, ensuring they can never lose their way here. Master Baggins trails along near the back of the group, his eyes wide and mouth falling open in awe as he looks around, and Thorin has to clench his teeth and remind himself that this is likely the first the hobbit has ever seen of _any_ other culture’s architecture. There’s nothing to say he wouldn’t gasp and exclaim just as loudly and with just as much wonderment were he to see Erebor in all its glory…

At last, they emerge from the seemingly endless hallways and gardens onto a wide, round balcony, open to the sky and bordered with scattered statues and green things growing out of great pots on the ground, not unlike the spot where Lord Elrond had first greeted them. There are two tables set up in the space: one long and low to the ground, set for the majority of the Company to dine comfortably, and another taller, small and circular, near which Gandalf and Lord Elrond now stand, conversing quietly. The two tall figures look up when Lindir precedes them into the room and announces, “King Thorin II Oakenshield, and companions.”

Thorin casts the elf a dark glance, reminded of his exchange with Elrond that morning and wondering again at how he should be so easily recognized; he surely would have noticed Gandalf speaking his name to the elf lord when they first arrived, even amongst all the foreign words. Perhaps the elf’s spies had overheard he and Gandalf speaking when they had first emerged from the secret pass into the valley, he thinks as he makes his way over to where the wizard and their host are clearly waiting for him, or perhaps there is magic laid here so that Elrond always knows the identities of those who trespass in his realm.

“Oh, Bilbo, won’t you join us?” Gandalf calls, and Thorin looks up at him sharply, before twisting back to look at his One, who still lingers back by the doorway, distracted by his perusal of the architecture as the others all streamed toward the lower table, the twelve of them filling it up completely.

“Oh, er, yes, I suppose,” Master Baggins replies, glancing first at Gandalf and the elf and then casting an apprehensive look at Thorin as he comes trotting over towards them. They all turn to take their seats as he approaches, and Thorin realizes then that the high table has around it not only the two chairs sized for big folk, but also two more that are slightly longer of leg, their seats higher from the ground and closer to the tabletop, with a wooden step built into their front to aid the shorter races in ascending them.

So Gandalf had planned this arrangement.

“You seem much improved since this morning, Master Hobbit,” Lord Elrond comments, smiling from his place beside Gandalf’s, placing him at Thorin’s right and directly across from Master Baggins. Around them, silent, wispy servers begin bringing plates of green vegetables and goblets full of wine to the tables, to the unhappy mutterings of the Company at Thorin’s back.

“I am, thank you,” Bilbo replies, returning the smile as he reaches for a large platter piled high with leaves. Thorin fights the urge to snort; he cannot think of anything this _elf_ has done to warrant his gratitude.

As if sensing Thorin’s resentment, Master Baggins glances over at him, eyes narrowing and lips tightening disapprovingly.

“I have always said hobbits are remarkably resilient little creatures,” Gandalf says then, and Lord Elrond smiles and nods, as if he has heard this thread many a time before from the old wanderer. “Quick on their feet and just as quick to bounce back from any sort of hurt!”

“Well, I don’t know that that’s so much to do with being a hobbit as it is with your excellent lodgings here, your lordship,” Master Baggins demurs, addressing Lord Elrond. “I dare say I haven’t felt so refreshed in many months,” he gushes, “and we’ve only been here a day!”

“You are welcome to stay and break your journey here as long as you wish, Bilbo Baggins of the Shire,” the elf responds, smiling indulgently across the table at him.

“That is quite a generous offer, considering we know nothing of you nor you of us,” Thorin puts in before Master Baggins can respond, his voice grumbly and low, “since none of us have even been properly introduced to each other.” He avoids meeting his One’s disapproving glare again, knows that the same _‘Be polite!’_ from that morning would be written across his face if Thorin did look. He instead opts to level his gaze across the table at the wizard, whom he can only assume has by now revealed their identities and everything about their quest to this great elven friend of his.

“Ah, yes,” Lord Elrond responds mildly, and Thorin glances over at him. “You must forgive me, I had rather assumed there was no need for introductions. You have your grandfather’s bearing, Thorin, son of Thráin,” he says, his tone turning formal as he inclines his head towards Thorin. “I knew Thrór when he ruled under the Mountain.”

“Indeed?” Thorin drawls, holding the elf’s gaze steadily. They had had few enough allies outside their own race long before Erebor was stolen from them, and fewer still when Thrór had fallen out with that weed-eating lordling in Mirkwood. Thorin cannot quite suspect the wizard of having led them directly into the arms of one who knows him only by reputation, by infamy, who might seek the bounty on Thorin’s head or simply seek to extort a ransom from what is left of Durin’s Line in exchange for returning their wayward king… He could almost suspect it, but not quite. “He made no mention of _you_.”

He feels Master Baggins’ outrage bubbling up through their connection a half second before the hobbit speaks. “Well, my mother did!” he declares, and Thorin does look at him now, him and everyone else, including the elf, whose eyebrows have risen slightly in surprise.

“Your mother?” Elrond prompts, while Gandalf seems to be attempting to smother his chuckles in his wine.

Master Baggins gives a decisive nod along with a sharp stab of his fork into the vegetables on his plate, shooting Thorin a dirty look before addressing the elf. “Belladonna Took,” he says. “She visited here with Gandalf when she was young. It was before I was born, of course, but she always told me stories about how beautiful the hidden valley was, and,” he graces Lord Elrond with another smile, a smile that has Thorin scowling in turn, “how very gracious her hosts were.”

“Indeed she did,” Gandalf chimes in, then adds with a glance at Elrond, “This would have been some six decades back, I believe.”

“I remember her,” Lord Elrond replies, nodding and smiling first at the wizard and then at Master Baggins. “She was quite extraordinary: one of the few halflings I’ve ever heard of venturing so far beyond the Shire.” Thorin feels Bilbo’s good mood dim ever so slightly at the use of the word _halfling_ , and he turns his glare up at the elf now instead. “I suppose it is to be expected that you come from such a remarkable bloodline,” Elrond goes on, still smiling, and glances briefly at Thorin as well, “considering with whom you share your soulbond.”

Bilbo, mid-bite of food, seems to inhale a whole leaf of lettuce in his shock, setting him to hacking and coughing, while Thorin’s own wine glass meets the tabletop again with enough force to have shattered it, were it made of anything weaker than brass. “What?!” Thorin demands, sitting forward in his chair, furious gaze switching back and forth between the elf and the wizard, unsure as yet who to blame for this breach.

Having got his airway clear again but voice still raspy, Bilbo adds his own objections. “What— What— Why would you say that?!” he squeaks, one hand clutching the cravat at his throat as he stares up at Lord Elrond.

The elf looks back and forth between them, a frown beginning to crease his ageless, alien face, while Gandalf once again only smirks into his wine, apparently _amused_ to see the personal affairs of his supposed friends and comrades laid bare before strangers. “Forgive me,” Elrond says again, slowly, though his tone is cold now, the sort of tone Thorin is rather more used to hearing from elves, instead of the indulgent, overly friendly one he had adopted when speaking to Master Baggins. The elf’s gaze focuses on Thorin at last, his eyes hard and reproof clear in his expression, “But I was under the impression that dwarves always shared such knowledge with their soulmates, and did not allow them to remain in ignorance, no matter their race.”

“We do,” Thorin growls, speaking over Master Baggins’ sputtering. “But we are not in the habit of revealing ourselves and our private matters to outsiders,” he says, now turning his glare onto the grinning wizard.

“I didn’t breathe a word of it!” Gandalf protests, holding his hands up, yet still smirking.

“You must have!” Bilbo cries, frowning up at his old friend as well. “How else could Lord Elrond know?!”

It strikes Thorin that that is the nearest Master Baggins has ever come to actually acknowledging their bond, and for a long moment he can do nothing but stare at his One, and then Lord Elrond breaks through their arguing.

“I’m afraid I must beg your pardon yet again, your majesty,” the elf says, and Thorin looks over at him, caught off-guard by the honorific. The elf’s expression has softened somewhat, apologetic rather than accusatory now. “Gandalf speaks the truth: he did not inform me of your bond, and it seems I have also made some incorrect assumptions.”

“Explain,” Thorin growls.

“Please,” Bilbo adds quietly.

“All elves can sense something of the flow of fëa,” Lord Elrond begins, and Thorin scowls; trust an elf to answer with more riddles when asked to clear something up. “The life-force that animates all living creatures, the sacred fire of Ilúvatar. I believe, in your tongue, it is called id-‘Ersar.”

Thorin jerks forward, hands gripping the edge of the table. “How do you know that word?!” he demands.

The elf seems unfazed by Thorin’s reaction, looking back at him coolly as he replies, “I learned the dwarvish tongue many centuries ago, before Khazad-dûm fell, when there was friendship between your people and mine.”

Thorin studies him for a long moment, the invocation of his ancestors’ sacred halls giving him pause. There was once indeed a time when someone like Lord Elrond might have been allowed into their trust; even now, Durin’s Door stands as a monument to that time, welcoming travelers into the ancient, desolate kingdom with words written in the elven tongue. “Fine,” he spits at last. “Go on.”

“Thank you,” Elrond responds dryly, tipping his head slightly in Thorin’s direction. “As I said, most Eldar are able to sense this force, and it is, admittedly, particularly clear to me,” he continues, gaze switching between Thorin and Bilbo again.

“What does that mean?” Bilbo asks, his voice weak and shaking.

“It means,” Tharkûn speaks up at last, still smiling smugly as he looks around at them all, “that amongst his many gifts, Lord Elrond possesses the ability to see that which is unseen.”

Thorin stares at the wizard, the pieces of several different puzzles all finally clicking together in his mind. The shortage of beds in their quarters, and his suspicions that the elves somehow knew there were two soulbonded pairs amongst their number – proven right, it turns out. And Tharkûn’s needling the last week or more, how he has attempted to drive Thorin here, to meet with an elf. An elf who speaks Khuzdul and likely learned many of the ancient arts of the Longbeards, and who is particularly sensitive to things that are invisible or hidden. Like moon runes.

And, some small, painfully hopeful voice whispers in the back of Thorin’s mind, an elf who might help convince a disbelieving hobbit.

“So… So you’re absolutely sure?” Master Baggins squeaks out then, drawing Thorin out of his thoughts. He has left off eating now and is wringing his hands together in his lap as he looks across the table at Elrond. “That we, that Thorin and I, are, um…”

The elf lord’s expression seems to soften, though Thorin barely takes any notice, trying to block out the mess of emotions that comes flowing through their bond, proof, yet again, of just how much his One wants nothing to do with him…

“Yes,” Lord Elrond says, voice grave. “It is unmistakable.” He pauses, purses his lips, and then goes on, “Your fëa is almost entirely entwined, like two water droplets that have met at the edges and begun to form into one greater whole.”

“Oh,” Master Baggins says. He takes a breath, blinking rapidly though his gaze does not focus on any of them. “Oh. I see. Well.”

“Are you alright?” Thorin asks, despite the hollowness at his center, shifting in his chair and reaching out towards the hobbit. His instinct to protect his One rises as strong as ever, undaunted even by Bilbo’s clear and ongoing rejection.

His instincts don’t stand a chance when the hobbit flinches away from him, though.

“I think,” Master Baggins says, staring down at his fists, clenched tight in his lap, “that I may have overtaxed myself, coming out like this so soon. Please excuse me, Lord Elrond.”

“Of course,” the elf answers, and raises a hand to gesture to one of the attendants hovering around the room. “Please take Master Baggins back to his quarters.”

The second elf bows low, then waits for Master Baggins to climb down from his chair before leading him briskly back out the way they came.

Thorin watches him go, watches as his One disappears round a bend in the corridor, and goes on watching, staring after the hobbit for long, empty minutes. He’s dimly aware of Gandalf raising some topic of idle chatter with Elrond, speaking of their journey thus far and the cover story of going to visit Thorin’s relations in the Iron Hills. They pull Thorin back from his brooding when the conversation turns to the swords they had found in the trolls’ hoard and Gandalf prompts Thorin to show the ancient blade he now carries to Lord Elrond for his inspection.

Elrond’s gaze is pitying when he glances at Thorin now, even as he tells them the history of Glamdring and Orcrist, and grows only more so when Gandalf throws in the comment that Master Baggins carries a small sword that is a perfect match to Thorin’s.

 _A perfect match,_ Thorin thinks, _unlike those who wield them._ He pushes his chair back then, excusing himself from the table and crossing the room to stand on the far side of his Company. He pulls out his hip flask as Bofur begins a song, stomping along to the beat and hoping to disappear amongst his kin and the taste of drink stronger than elven dinner wine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Khuzdul Terms  
> id-‘Ersar – The supreme fire
> 
> [Boost this chapter on tumblr](http://jezunya.tumblr.com/post/177860843834/to-halve-and-to-hold-ch-8-is-up-on-ao3-now-we)


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The Company might be friend **ly** , he thinks, but that does not actually make them Bilbo’s **friends**. They are Thorin’s followers, and his kin, and as far as they’re all concerned Bilbo is only here – only tolerated – because he happens to be the lesser half of their great leader. He really ought to avoid reminding them all about just how frequently and vehemently he refuses to believe in any of this soulbond nonsense, especially if he wants them to **remain** friendly._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! It's been a hard six months, but we're finally back on track with this fic. Thank you, as always, to everyone who has waited & hung on, and welcome to the new readers who've joined us since the last update! Your comments & kudos helped me keep going on this n_n
> 
> Also, if you haven't checked it out yet, allow me to rec the fic I spent the last six months on: **[As Through a Swirling Mist](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16308632)**  
>  Bilbo/Thorin, post-Botfa, spooky & suspenseful but with a guaranteed happy ending! Complete at 11 chapters & 21.7k words

The night is cool and dark when Bilbo next wakes, some unknown number of hours later. He simply lies in bed for several long, silent minutes, sinking back into his mound of pillows and letting the shapes of the bedroom start to form before his eyes in the dim moonlight. He had gone almost directly to bed after he’d come back from dinner, and hadn’t woken when the others – presumably – returned. He hadn’t been lying when he said he’d overtaxed himself earlier, the excitement of touring the elven city he’s only ever read about before, and then supping with its lord ruler, apparently too much for him after all that had happened earlier in the day.

What Lord Elrond had said at dinner certainly hadn’t helped matters, either.

He throws the blankets off with sudden fervor, his own thoughts too loud in his head as he hops down from the bed and crosses to the bathing room. The moonlight is brighter in here; the open balustrades that stand in place of a solid wall on one side of the room offer a view of the valley far below and allow the light of the stars and half-moon to stream in, reflecting off of the bathwater and the floor-to-ceiling mirror that encompasses the washroom’s back wall. The water shimmers and shines in the pale light, gentle waves lapping at the near edge while the elegant stone fountain that feeds into the bath tinkles serenely – everything cool and calm and belying the danger inherent in this place. The bath itself is more a pool than a tub, really, and Bilbo had only dared venture into its shallowest reaches the previous day, fearing that anything deep enough for an elf to relax in could surely drown an unsuspecting hobbit.

He bypasses the pool now with averted eyes, making instead for the wash basin and shelves of linens at the back of the room by the fountain. A little cold water on his face always refreshes him after a bout of troubled sleep, and afterward he takes a minute to clean his teeth as well, luxuriating in the simple pleasures of basic hygiene after so long on the road, letting the cool water wash away the tangle of emotions that has been clouding his mind since…

Well, not _just_ since dinner, he supposes. For weeks, in fact. Since the moment he met a pair of blue eyes across the threshold of Bag End’s front door.

He leans over to retrieve a dry towel from the shelf, and perhaps it’s just a trick of the light, or his tired mind fooling him, but there seems to be a tremble in his right hand as he reaches out.

Bilbo clutches the appendage against his chest, flexing his hand in and out of a fist, and shudders as he feels gooseflesh rise all over his body, his skin once again responding to the phantom chill of a winter long gone by. _It’s not real,_ he reminds himself, then repeats the sentence aloud. “It’s over. They’re gone. They’re gone and you’re still here,” he whispers, and glances automatically up at his reflection in the giant mirror – only to find his shirt, hopelessly rumpled in sleep, and, more importantly, unbuttoned far too wide and exposing far too much.

He spins around, turning his back on his reflection and burying his face in a towel without looking. He stands there for a long moment, trying to force out the images in his mind, the things he had relived yesterday and the dreams that had plagued him tonight. Taking a deep breath, he at last drops the towel, letting it fall into the basket by the wash basin, and then rebuttons his shirt as he strides back into the darkness of the bedroom. The bathroom is no refuge, but in here feels too enclosed now, too stifling, too foreign, and so he pulls on a clean pair of trousers and a waistcoat before throwing open the double doors and dashing out into the fresh air of the Company’s common area.

It’s not so different out here than in the washroom, Bilbo concedes, even as he gulps in breaths like he’s just broken the surface of too-deep water. The courtyard around which their rooms are all situated is bathed in moonlight, but here, at least, he doesn’t feel so isolated, so much like the only things left in the world are him and his memories. He can hear distant elven singing on the wind and the dwarves’ snores echoing out of their bedrooms, and, he realizes after a moment of squinting, one dwarf appears to have taken up residence on one of the couches along the edge of the corridor a short distance from the doors to Bilbo’s room.

Someone perhaps had too much wine at supper, Bilbo thinks with a wry twist of his lips as he pads silently nearer, and didn’t make it to their bed. The couch is in shadow, under the overhang of the veranda rather than exposed to the open sky in the courtyard, and the dwarf is turned away from him, nothing more than a lumpy, deeply breathing silhouette and a head of long dark hair visible from this angle. It could be almost anyone, he reasons, still approaching slowly, inexorably, as if some outside force has taken hold of him and is drawing him onward – or, really, as if his mind has latched onto the first idle curiosity it encountered, eager to focus on anything other than the thoughts and memories that had driven him from his quarters. Finding out which of his companions cannot hold their liquor is certainly good enough to keep his attention for the moment.

Only a few paces away now, the dwarf shifts in his sleep, exposing his profile to the moonlight: a heavy brow, knotted with a frown even in sleep; a sharp nose; and a dark, short-cropped beard whose little flecks of silver shine in the moonlight, just as the steaks in the rest of his hair do, now that Bilbo is close enough to notice.

Bilbo freezes, staring down at Thorin’s sleeping face and half-expecting the dwarf king to snap awake at the next movement.

“Psst!” a whisper suddenly hisses out across the empty courtyard, making Bilbo jump and look around. “Baggins!”

Eyes darting frantically about for several heartbeats, Bilbo’s gaze is finally caught by a quick flash of light, and there he finds a figure standing across the yard from him, star-shaped hair highlighted by the moon. The figure gives a quick, jaunty wave, and whatever it was that had reflected the moonlight before flashes again for s brief moment. Bilbo casts one last apprehensive look down at Thorin before setting out across the courtyard, his steps quickening into a jog as the roofless balcony feels too exposed now, a no-man’s-land where the unwary might be snatched away into the sky by some nameless night terror.

Nori is leaning against one of the tall stone columns that encircle the courtyard when Bilbo reaches him, half in the shadow of the corridor, only the tips of his hair and the bulb of his nose and a flash of grinning teeth catching the moonlight now. “You gotta be careful, or you’ll startle his majesty over there,” the dwarf whispers, jerking his chin back the way Bilbo had come. In his hands, Bilbo sees now, is a small knife whose blade occasionally catches the light from the moon as he turns it this way and that, though there’s no block of wood for whittling in sight like he’s seen some of the others carry around.

“He’s quite deeply asleep,” Bilbo responds absently, and frowns slightly as the dwarf carelessly flips the knife around between his fingers. The royal title sounded more like an insult on Nori’s lips than it had coming from Lord Elrond. An insult, or perhaps a cheeky nickname, or some combination… He doesn’t know which it is, doesn’t really know what to make of Nori, truth be told, nor how he fits into the fabric of the Company. He’s Dori and Ori’s brother, of course, and he seems friendly with Bofur, and… and _very_ friendly with Dwalin. But there’s always been something about the pointy-haired dwarf that has put Bilbo off, unsettled him, a sort of quiet watchfulness about him that is far sharper than his younger brother’s shy ways and that persists even when sharing a laugh with Bofur or placing a wager with Glóin.

That sharpness is in evidence now as he looks down at Bilbo, dark eyes gleaming shrewdly despite his relaxed stance. “Sure about that, are you?” The knife flips around again, briefly catching the light once more, before disappearing up a shirtsleeve.

“I— Well— Yes?” Bilbo is caught between the urge to glance back the way he had come, half afraid to find Thorin awake and watching them, and the apprehension of taking his eyes off of Nori and from wherever else he might produce a blade. The former wins out, for just a moment, but, no, the dwarf king hasn’t moved, his chest still rising and falling with the deep, even breaths of slumber.

“Interesting,” is all Nori says in reply, his gaze following Bilbo’s across the courtyard and a grin spreading across his face when Bilbo looks at him once more.

“What are you doing out here in the middle of the night, anyway?” Bilbo demands with a scowl, folding his arms and leaning back against the pillar opposite the dwarf.

Nori’s gleaming eyes focus on him again, taking in his defensiveness with a quick flick, his smile only widening. “It’s my turn on watch,” he says, and suddenly there is another knife in his hand – different from the previous one, Bilbo is quite sure – and he begins lazily tossing it up, end over end, to catch it again in the same hand without looking. Bilbo can’t help wincing, remembering how his father always used to caution him when they were cooking: _A falling knife has no handle._ “Why? What are you doing up? Couldn’t sleep?”

“As a matter of fact, no,” Bilbo responds, a touch sullenly. Trust the dwarves to feel they need to keep watch even when they’re in one of the safest, most civilized places in all Arda.

“Hm…” Nori’s gaze drifts across the courtyard again, even as the knife continues to spin up and back down, up and back down. “First time since we set out from the Shire that you’ve had more than a few paces between the two of you, isn’t it? Usually it’s just Fíli and Kíli around the campfire, but now it’s walls and doors and the length of a hallway.”

Bilbo jerks back, shoulders hunching towards his ears as he glares, both confused and affronted. “What?!”

The knife pauses as Nori looks at him again, and Bilbo has never felt quite so much like a fieldmouse before a hawk, not even when he was facing down three mountain trolls intent on having him for supper. “Or maybe not,” the dwarf concedes, though he’s still grinning, his gaze still sharp and calculating. The knife starts its up and down motion again. “Else his majesty over there would probably have just as much trouble sleeping.”

Bilbo hugs his arms tight around himself, his fingers digging into the flesh just above his elbows. He dearly wants to ask what exactly that is supposed to mean, but he’s already quite sure he won’t like the answer, blast these dwarves and their blasted beliefs… Instead, he asks, “Why is Thorin sleeping out here, anyway? Did he fall asleep during his watch or something?”

Nori snorts, and, with one last flip and catch, the knife disappears inside his tunic. “Please. Thorin would be the last person to ever shirk his duties like that.”

“Then why?” Bilbo demands. “Had too much wine and couldn’t make it to his bed? Or is that also too undignified for ‘his majesty’?”

Everything about Nori seems to go very still all of a sudden, and oh, Bilbo didn’t know what it meant to be stared down by a predator before. He also realizes, belatedly, distantly, that it was definitely more an affectionate nickname when Nori said it, while his own decidedly mocking tone has put him on dangerous ground indeed.

“Did you know,” the dwarf says very, very quietly, while his gaze holds Bilbo pinned in place, “that most dwarves carry a flask of strong liquor with them at all times? Especially on long, arduous journeys. Or dangerous quests.” He pauses for a second, and only goes on after Bilbo finally manages to shake his head a little. “It’s supposed to be saved up in case they become grievously wounded, so that they can either pass peacefully or dull the pain while the healers work on them.” He looks away at last, out across the courtyard, and Bilbo gasps in a breath, sagging against his pillar and feeling himself tremble all over, now that he’s no longer held captive by that gaze. “I could never fathom how anyone could reject their One when they found ‘em,” he goes on thoughtfully, his eyes still focused on something beyond Bilbo, “but I’ve heard being rejected like that is a pain not unlike the approach of death. So yes, Thorin had a few swigs at dinner, probably a few swigs too many. Not that I blame him.”

Bilbo’s breath stutters again, his chest tightening as he looks up at Nori, only to find the dwarf looking back at him with something bordering on dislike in his face. Certainly disapproval, or distaste, even. The implication in his words and expression is perfectly clear: that, as he sees it, Bilbo is the cause of that pain – a view the rest of the Company no doubt share, he realizes with dawning horror – and that Nori does not take kindly to someone who troubles his friend and leader so.

The dwarf sniffs then, dropping his gaze, and his expression seems to clear somewhat. “Lucky for you, though,” he says as he looks up again, “you also just so happened to save my brother’s life the other day, so I’ve decided to help you out.”

“I—” Bilbo balks, stunned and confused by this sudden change in course. “What?”

Nori chuckles, reaching one hand up as if to casually scratch at the back of his neck, only for that hand to emerge again with a third knife in its grip, long and thin and terribly sharp, Bilbo can see even from where he stands. “You don’t remember, do you? It’s no surprise, don’t trouble yourself – or make yourself sick again,” he adds, eyeing Bilbo meaningfully, and Bilbo exhales, nodding and hugging himself tighter still, willing away the imagined wintry winds once more, “but you managed to hit one of those beasts with a rock square to the eye, saved Ori from a right grisly death.”

Bilbo blinks across at him, taken aback: he does remember, hazily, though at the time he’d thought it was one of his neighbors, any of a dozen different hobbits he’d banded together with at various points to survive that awful winter. He had struggled to remind himself yesterday that it was dwarves he was surrounded with now, not the residents of Hobbiton or his cousins in the Old Took’s Great Smials.

“You’ve got a good arm on you,” Nori says, drawing Bilbo back to the present moment, and the dwarf is smiling slightly again, like he’s weighing Bilbo up and actually approves of what he’s seeing. “And good aim. I could teach you a thing or two, help you survive the next fight we see.”

“Oh, I, er… Alright?”

Nori grins, teeth flashing in the moonlight once more as he balances his long knife upright on the tip of one finger. “Oh, and, as for why Thorin isn’t sleeping in his bed tonight,” he says, dropping his voice to a whisper just as Bilbo hears a rustle of mail and fabric behind him and the heavy tread of boots approaching from across the courtyard, “I’d say it was because there was a _hobbit_ in it.”

“Wha—?!” Bilbo sputters, just as another voice rings out in the night air.

“Nori,” Thorin calls, his voice quietened for the benefit of those still asleep, yet still sending a thrill through Bilbo like the first spark in a well-kindled hearth. Then, as Thorin draws nearer, Bilbo hears him stop and take a quick, startled breath, before acknowledging Bilbo with a low, “Master Baggins.”

Bilbo nods abstractedly and forces a flat, polite smile into his face as he glances in Thorin’s direction, though he can’t bear to actually look the dwarf king in the eye, certainly not after what Nori has just suggested. Perhaps he ought to make his excuses now and escape back to his room – or is it meant to be _their_ room? He squeezes his eyes shut, hearing again Lord Elrond’s matter-of-fact declaration that he and Thorin are— That they are, in fact, really and truly, somehow—

“What brings you out on this fine clear night, uzbadime?” Nori asks, his voice pulling Bilbo back out of his spiraling thoughts as he flips the knife off of the tip of him finger only to grab it again in mid-spin.

He can feel Thorin’s gaze switching between him and Nori, eyes narrowed and a frown tugging at his mouth. “What have you been saying to him?” the king growls after a moment, turning to Nori, his frown sinking into a full scowl as he watches the knife in the other dwarf’s hand flick and spin.

“Nothing of consequence,” Nori replies, shrugging, at the same time that Bilbo says, “Nothing that concerns _you_.”

It’s a knee-jerk response, made all the more impolite for its inaccuracy, and Bilbo quails a little when Thorin looks over at him again, his face shadowed and eyes gleaming palely in the low light. Bilbo swallows past the tightness in his throat but holds his ground, a spiteful sort of stubbornness overtaking him despite the strange, spiraling ache growing behind his sternum. “I couldn’t sleep, that’s all,” he says loftily, “but I rather think I shall be able to now. Thank you for the conversation, Nori. Good night.” And with that, he sets off across the courtyard again towards his room.

Behind him, he hears Thorin rumble admonishingly, “You frightened him.”

“He frightens easy,” is Nori’s careless reply, at which Thorin only snorts: derisive, but not disagreeing. Their voices grow quieter and more distant as Bilbo moves away from them, discussing who is to take the next shift on watch, and then Bilbo makes it back into his room and pulls the doors closed behind him, plunging him back into cool, silent darkness.

 

* * *

 

Sunrise wakes him the next day, the pale light filtering in from the washroom and the habits of the last several weeks of travel pulling Bilbo from his bed, no matter how a part of him wishes to simply hide away in here until all these blasted dwarves and elves and wizards all disappear and he wakes up back in his own smial again.

The elves are no longer ‘blasted’ or anything like it, he decides when he emerges from his room to find that their hosts have brought them a lovely banquet breakfast, set up on low tables in the center of the Company’s shared courtyard. Nor are the dwarves who beckon him over as soon as they catch sight of him, he thinks with some relief; they really are becoming his friends, and he shouldn’t let the terrible insecurities of the darkest watches of the night convince him otherwise. Fíli and Kíli have saved him a spot like usual, and Bofur comes to join them only a minute later with more energy than should really be allowed at this hour of the morning. Bombur has a ready list of the best dishes Bilbo ought to try first, while Dori passes him a fresh pot of tea with a smile.

He can almost ignore the weight of Nori’s gaze on him from down the table. He and Dwalin mutter quietly to each other over their food, though at least the big bald dwarf never once glances on Bilbo’s direction. It is several minutes before Bilbo realizes what is missing from the morning’s tableau: there is no Balin in his usual place on Dwalin’s other side. Also no Ori to huff good-naturedly at the princes’ jokes and balance out their youthful exuberance with his relative reserve, nor—

Nor a stern king to sit at the head of the table and rein them all in.

“Where’s Ori gone?” Bilbo asks, looking around the table. His eyes dart around the courtyard, eyes seeking a regal lump reclining on one of the couches but finding none. “And… And Balin and Thorin?” he adds, quieter, hesitating on the question for a moment.

“Some errand or other,” Bombur shrugs from across the table. “Something to do with the map, I think…” he adds, then, when Bifur elbows him, he looks up with wide eyes, his face flushing slightly as he meets Bilbo’s gaze, “Oh, but, um—”

“But we’re not supposed to talk about that while we’re here,” Fíli hisses, his voice barely more than a whisper. He leans around Kíli to look at Bilbo. “Uncle says we should assume the elves are always spying on us at any given moment, so we need to watch what we say.”

Bilbo scoffs, rolling his eyes. It’s just like he’d thought last night, about their having set a watch. In Rivendell of all places! “Your uncle is being just a tad paranoid,” he says waspishly.

“Aw, you shouldn’t talk about yourself like that, Uncle Bilbo!” Kíli quips, to general chuckles from around the table, while Bilbo only glares half-heartedly at him.

“I am not your uncle, Kíli,” he sighs, shaking his head with a smile, the response automatic by now, and Kíli grins back at him – but the others are mostly quiet, and Bilbo finds his gaze drawn almost guiltily down the table toward Nori again, who is looking back at him with that same measuring, weighing, vaguely threatening expression in his eyes from the night before.

“You know, I— I think I’ve had quite enough to eat for now,” Bilbo says, dropping his gaze and beginning to climb to his feet. “I think I’ll go have a smoke and a stroll through some of those beautiful gardens we passed yesterday evening.”

“Really?” Kíli asks, wrinkling his nose up at Bilbo. “Why?”

“D’you want any company?” Bofur inquires from his other side.

“No, no, quite alright,” Bilbo waves them off, backing away and then turning to hurry off to his room. He fetches his pipe and pouch of weed and then makes for the great double doors that lead out of their quarters, avoiding the gazes of his— of the dwarves. He makes his escape out into the hallway and thankfully remembers enough of their course last night to find his way toward some of the gardens they had passed before.

The Company might be friend _ly_ , he thinks, scurrying around a corner and sighing in relief as the doors to their apartments disappear from view behind him, but that does not actually make them Bilbo’s _friends_. They are Thorin’s followers, and his kin, and as far as they’re all concerned Bilbo is only here – only tolerated – because he happens to be the lesser half of their great leader. He chews on the stem of his pipe, hardly seeing the plants and flowers around him, and decides that he really ought to avoid reminding them all about just how frequently and vehemently he refuses to believe in any of this soulbond nonsense, especially if he wants them to _remain_ friendly.

Especially since he seems increasingly to be in the minority with his disbelief.

He stops in the middle of the stone-paved walkway and shakes himself. He could have sat and stewed in these thoughts amongst the Company, or while sitting holed up in his room! No, getting a little space from them all – both physically and mentally – is just what he needs right now, Bilbo thinks. He pulls out his pipeweed and lights up, before setting out once more at a determinedly leisurely pace, refusing to think of dwarves or adventures or soulmates or any of it.

He drifts aimlessly through Rivendell’s winding corridors for a long while, a beautiful garden or magnificent cliffside view on display everywhere he turns. Yes, this was definitely a good idea, he decides, stopping in his stroll to lean against the railing overlooking a series of waterfalls that flow artfully one into the next on their way down into the valley. He draws in a deep breath, leaning his forehead against the elf-height banister and peering out between its spindles. A quiet walk was precisely what he needed, some fresh air and the unassuming company of green things to help ground him and break up the troubling thoughts that have plagued him since yesterday. There is nothing more natural in the world than a hobbit in a garden, after all, and his current surroundings could very easily be from any one of his past walking holidays, if on a bit of a grander scale than what the Shire generally has to offer. He can almost imagine himself on one such easy stroll now, wandering at his leisure, waving to his neighbors and acquaintances, stopping to smoke or soak up a little sunshine whenever he pleases, without a care in the world or a single thought about dwarves or wizards or quests…

It is in these rather lightened spirits that Bilbo soon finds the gardens giving way to stone once more as he resumes his walk: not just the little gazebos and benches that have been dotted throughout the plantlife thus far, but a real, solid structure, a great sprawling building that is formed right out of the cliffside and trails out in either direction as far as Bilbo cares to look. The doors to this building stand open, and from within drift the sounds of gentle string music and, most importantly, of turning pages, as, he can see when he draws nearer, the inside is dominated by row upon row of towering bookcases.

Bilbo stares up around himself as he ventures into the library, his pipe hanging slack from his lips – and then he scurries back out again, tapping out the ash onto the roots of a plant that will appreciate it and then stowing it away inside his jacket once more as he goes back inside. It wouldn’t do to have a stray ember damage any of the exquisite volumes or ancient scrolls housed here, after all.

There are a few elves scattered about, reading or studying or practicing some small, quiet craft at the tables set up every dozen rows or so. Bilbo pads silently between the shelves, his reverence for this place mostly stopping his fingers from simply running across every spine and title he passes, but every now and then he allows himself to pause and draw a book from amidst its compatriots to carefully open and flip through. His mother was never one much for reading, but she had described the grandeur of Rivendell’s libraries whenever she told the story of her travels here, knowing how it would delight her studious son and husband, and now, Bilbo finds, even her soaring retellings failed to do this place justice. There are books from every kingdom and people Bilbo’s ever heard of and many more from places, or in languages, he doesn’t recognize at all, books taller than he is laid out on enormous display easels, books covered in the humblest linen and the shiniest gilt… Even books with dwarven runes running down their spines, he realizes with a start, finding he has wandered into an entire – if sparse – section of Khuzdul writings.

Bilbo is pleased to find he can recognize a word here and there, and sound out more that he can’t translate, as he taps his fingers along the shelves in the gaps between the books and peers close to study their spines. He speaks the dwarven tongue more than he can read it, rather the opposite of most of his linguistic studies in the past, but it can’t be helped, as most often any runes they teach him are cut into the dirt around the campfire and then stomped out again the moment they’re done, lest any future traveler happen upon them. It all seems so unnecessarily secretive, he thinks, frowning at the memory of dinner last night and how offended Thorin had been when Lord Elrond had spoken that word in Khuzdul… And after the elf lord has helped them and given them shelter and—

His thoughts come to an abrupt halt as he nears the end of the row, realizing half a second before he rounds the corner that he recognizes the voices up ahead.

“You can put this stack over there with the others, Ori, thank you, lad,” Balin’s soft lilt drifts up through the air towards him. Bilbo silently creeps forward the last few paces, peeking around the end of the shelf and taking in the view before him: Here are the three dwarves who had been missing from breakfast, sitting around one of the library’s wide wooden tables and surrounded by piles of crackling old tomes. Ori is clearing away a teetering stack of books as Balin, on the far side of the table, flips open another volume.

And nearest Bilbo, with his back towards the hobbit’s position, sits Thorin.

The spaces on the shelves make more sense now, at least. It’s not that Lord Elrond’s library is poorly stocked, but rather that it’s just been pilfered by these three for… whatever it is they’re researching so feverishly. And rather unsuccessfully, going by the sound of disgust Thorin releases after a moment, impatience and frustration rolling off him in palpable waves, making Bilbo shrink back against the shelf as the king tosses his book aside and reaches for another.

Across from him, Balin sighs, shaking his head. “A brief mention in this one, but nothing more. Certainly nothing with enough detail to help us decipher it…” He keeps paging through his book, though his frown grows with every passing moment, and he spares only a quick glance up when Ori returns and resumes his own searching.

“It is the same in this one,” Thorin growls, thumbing through page after page as he quickly scans their text. The dwarves are quiet for a while then, each lost in their own books, and Bilbo can’t help but wonder that the other two somehow aren’t choking on the thick cloud of tension exuding from their king, like he is. But perhaps they’re simply more used to Thorin’s temper and dramatics after all this time than Bilbo is…

He’s just considering slipping away again, far too uncomfortable standing here eavesdropping like a naughty fauntling, when Thorin again lets loose a deeply unhappy noise, though this time his groan is tinged more with misery than anger as he hunches his shoulders and buries his head in his hands, thick fingers tangling in his hair.  

“Thorin…” Balin murmurs, gaze flicking up from his book to frown across at his king.

“This is hopeless!” Thorin growls.

“I’m sure if we just keep looking—” Balin starts to say.

“It is a lost art, Balin,” Thorin says without raising his head. “The secrets of our forebears were always tightly protected, and without access to the mines in Khazad-dûm, there were precious few who still remembered how to create the ink.”

“Few, yes,” Balin counters, “but not _none_ – and your grandfather was among that number. I myself learned a little of the process myself, but it was so long ago…” He sighs, shaking his head, and then squares his shoulders, leaning in over his book once more. “The answer is here somewhere. We simply need to keep looking.” When Thorin still does not look up, the older dwarf adds, very softly, “Ammâ zakhuthuzmâ.”

Thorin is silent and unmoving for a long moment, the very air around him seeming to pulse with fatigue, and despair, and then he murmurs quietly, “Perhaps we should ask Lord Elrond’s advice… like Tharkûn suggested…”

“Thorin, no!” Balin gasps – conveniently covering Bilbo’s own gasp of surprise, as shocked as anyone to hear that Thorin would ever even _consider_ such a thing, much less suggest it himself. While Balin goes on talking, pontificating about the sanctity of dwarven trade and cultural secrets, Thorin finally drops his hands and slowly raises his head once more. There is a sharpness to the air now, a sort of searching anticipation that Bilbo can feel thrumming through him as he watches Thorin straighten his posture and begin to carefully turn his head to look around at the shelves surrounding their table. Bilbo presses his lips together even as his breath hitches watching the dwarf, worried that another shocked inhale might give him away.

He could still get away now if he tried, he supposes, aided by the silent sure-footedness that comes so naturally to his kind and that Bilbo is particularly good at, if he does say so himself. But perhaps he should wait until Thorin’s suspicion cools once more – why, he probably just heard some passing sound in the library and has assumed there are elves spying on them, there’s absolutely reason for him to think Bilbo is—  

“You might as well come out, Master Baggins. I know you’re there.”

Cursing under his breath, Bilbo steps out around the shelf and meets the dwarves’ startled gazes with a sigh. Balin and Ori both gasp and drop their books, staring at him, while Thorin merely twists around in his chair to regard him. The king actually seems somehow _surprised_ that his gambit paid off, making Bilbo frown and wrinkle his nose – he really could have slipped away, or perhaps simply held still until Thorin began to think he had guessed wrong.

But then, a voice in the back of his mind that sounds suspiciously like his father remarks, _he_ was the one lurking where he shouldn’t; he can’t really be cross just because he was found out.

“Erm, hello,” Bilbo greets them with an awkward little wave of his hand. “I was just… out… walking… Lovely gardens, you know. Didn’t mean to disturb you all, terribly sorry, I’ll just—” He turns to leave, his discomfort at having been discovered – and called out by Thorin – outweighing any curiosity he might have felt over their research, but Thorin’s voice stops him before he can go far.

“Master Baggins!”

Wincing, Bilbo turns back to face the king, trying and failing to school his expression into something more neutral.

Thorin has risen from his chair now and is looking down at Bilbo grimly, looking like nothing so much as a tragic hero from legend, bound by duty and going bravely to his doom. Bilbo rather knows how he feels, knows the conversation they must have at some point, that has been looming over them ever since dinner last night – but he’d really rather continue putting it off, thank you very much. Thorin licks his lips, opens his mouth, pauses, then seems to change his mind about whatever it was he was going to say. “You should not wander about here alone,” he says at last, blue eyes boring into Bilbo’s.

Bilbo looks away, refusing to get caught up in Thorin’s gaze like he has so many times before. “It’s perfectly safe,” he huffs in reply, folding his arms. “Really, you’d think there were elves lying in wait around every corner, eager to murder us all in cold blood, with the way you lot act.”

The resounding silence from the three dwarves before him suggests that that’s _exactly_ what they think.

“Well!” he sniffs, and begins to back away towards the entrance once more. “I’ve found Lord Elrond’s people to be nothing but kind and gracious thus far, and they certainly haven’t accosted me on my walk – which I really should be getting back to. Good day!” He turns and sets off towards the double doors that will lead him back out into the gardens, walking quickly in the hopes that no one will call him back again before he can get well away.

And they don’t – but after a moment of quiet murmurs exchanged behind him, he does hear the heavy tread of steel boots following behind him.

He knows without looking that it must be Thorin, because that’s just how Bilbo’s luck has been of late. And it’s not as if any of the others have important matters of the soul to discuss with him…

He walks a little faster.

It’s a slim chance at best, but Bilbo can’t help hoping Thorin might turn back once Bilbo leaves the library, that he’ll stop at the threshold into the gardens and decide to go back to his books and whatever it is they’re all looking for in there. Studying some important matter in Khuzdul must surely be more appealing to a king of dwarves than being surrounded by living, green things. If Bilbo can just keep ahead of him, maybe he’ll give up, and they can keep avoiding each other for the rest of the day.

Hobbits can be quick when they want to be, of course, but sometimes there is simply no accounting for the taller races’ longer strides, and Bilbo finds himself muttering curses under his breath again as he hears Thorin’s steps drawing closer behind him. The doors are just ahead now, and, unless he breaks out into a full run, they are likely going to reach them at precisely the same time.

This indignity has gone on long enough, Bilbo decides resignedly, and he finally slows his pace as he reaches the library’s entrance once more. “Well then,” he says, stopping and turning back to face the dwarf – and yes, it is indeed Thorin, which is something of a relief at this point, else Bilbo might have been all but running from poor Ori, or perhaps even just some unsuspecting elf! “You’ve successfully walked me out,” he says with forced nonchalance, “and there wasn’t a single elf attack the whole way. Satisfied?”

Thorin, for his part, looks entirely unimpressed as he eyes Bilbo before dropping his gaze to rummage in the pockets of his coat. “I thought I might take in some of these gardens you are so enamored with,” he replies, pulling out his pipe and a box of dwarvish matchsticks. Then, at Bilbo’s wide-eyed look, he shrugs and sets about packing his pipe. “Balin thought I could do with a reprieve. Our search has been entirely fruitless thus far anyway… and, in fairness, he and Ori may be able to search more efficiently without me.”

“Oh. Well, erm…” Bilbo looks around, rather at a loss. He can’t very well tell Thorin to go walk somewhere else, or go back and make a nuisance of himself for Balin and Ori. And… And he really had seemed so miserable when Bilbo had come upon them before…

“Would you like a light?” Thorin asks, interrupting his thoughts, and he is proffering one of his matches when Bilbo looks at him again.

“Oh, er— Oh, why not. Yes, thank you.” Bilbo retrieves his own pipe and pipeweed, quickly readying it and then accepting the matchstick and strike plate from Thorin. He steps outside through the doors before lighting up, Thorin following a pace after him, and then watches as the dwarf does the same – perhaps Thorin has as much appreciation for the great value of books as he does, Bilbo finds himself wondering. He certainly knows what damage fire can do, he thinks with a frown, remembering what the dwarf king had told him about the dragon’s attack on Erebor and how he still dreams of those flames to this day.

Thorin sets off walking down the pathway without saying anything else – or even really looking at Bilbo – and the hobbit is left to decide whether to continue on with him or to scurry off in the other direction and hope to lose Thorin in all the foliage before the dwarf realizes he’s gone.

His Baggins side scoldingly reminds him of just how impolite that would be, while his inner Took rails against what a coward he’s being.

“Oh, bother and confiscate…” Bilbo growls, and sets off at a trot to catch up with Thorin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on [Dreamwidth](https://jezunya.dreamwidth.org/), where you can find writing updates for any of my fics & general real life ramblings.
> 
> You can also [signal boost this chapter on tumblr](http://jezunya.tumblr.com/post/183542963034/to-halve-and-to-hold-chapter-9-is-now-live-the) <3
> 
> Khuzdul Terms  
> Ammâ zakhuthuzmâ – We will endure/persevere  
> Uzbadime – my king


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